
Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE CONCEPT STANDARD 



A HISTORICAL SURVEY OF WHAT MEN HAVE CONCEIVED 

AS CONSTITUTING OR DETERMINING LIFE VALUES. 

CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION OF THE 

DIFFERENT THEORIES TOGETHER 

WITH GENERAL EDUCATIONAL 

IMPLICATIONS 



BY 
ANNE M. NICHOLSON, Ph.D. 



TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION, NO. 29 



Published bt 

3fcarb*r0 (College, (Columbia Itrtwrattij 

NEW YORK CITY 

1910 



Monograpt 



•£$ 






Copyright, 1910 
By ANNE M. NICHOLSON. 



(g"CI.A265067 



FOREWORD 

The present study is one that attempts to investigate what has 
constituted in certain eras of the world's history the standard by 
which all values were conceived or measured. That consciously 
or unconsciously such an ultimate point of reference or guiding 
principle has determined values in the past seems the only inter- 
pretation possible of our social inheritance to-day. It is wholly 
in accord with the main thesis of this study, to realize that the 
significance of the control was not always grasped by those whose 
destinies were being determined by it. It is also in accord to 
suggest that progress was surer, more direct, when there was a 
consciousness of the presence and nature of the control. The 
standard ethically conceived and realized as functioning in the 
life of a people has proved its worth by its greater power and 
by its tendency toward survival. It is in this last thought that 
there may be a warrant for this present essay. A social con- 
sciousness wakened as at present to the necessity of reflection 
may find help in any survey of its past experience. 

Contrary to ordinary procedure, greater time has been given 
to those periods that have been lightly passed over by current 
thought as having nothing worth while for modern needs. The 
survey of the past has shown that it seems impossible for an 
age to entertain more than one dominant idea at a given time. 
All delays in the progress of thought have seemed to result from 
the isolation of some one phase of a more inclusive whole. Neces- 
sary consideration of means to an end has frequently resulted in 
regarding the means as an end. While the attention is focused 
on the part rather than on the part as related to the whole, things 
are viewed out of proportion. It is some of these parts of the 
history of philosophy that are out of focus in the present direction 
of attention, that have received more attention in the present 
study than may seem justified. Toleration is asked for what 
may appear as digressions, and also some consideration of their 
import. 



Part of the work has been done while attending lectures on 
philosophy under Dr. John Angus MacVannel and Dr. John 
Dewey of Columbia University. The thesis was suggested and 
continued for several months under the guidance of Dr. Mac- 
Vannel. There may be found traces in this essay of the influence 
of the theories of both these scholars. 

Anne M. Nicholson. 



SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 
Fundamental Categories and Principles 

PAGE 

Implications of the logical situation in which the standard emerges 
and functions. Conclusions concerning certain types of judgment and 
their subsumption in the ethical or moral judgment. Essential nature 
of the reflective situation involving definitions of impulse, idea, habit, 
standard, character, control, reason. Effects of varying force of 
initial impulse. Emotional natures require the check of a controlling 
idea sufficient to hold in check the initial impulse until regulated by 
reason. The essence of control identical with the essence of humanity. 15 

CHAPTER II 

The Standard in Primitive Societies from the Genetic Point 
of View 

The entire discussion forces the query: Has the actual course of 
human evolution on the whole been from lower to higher, and if so 
is this movement based on something permanent in the nature of 
things, or in the forces that move the human mind? Main thesis of 
this genetic view : group approval or disapproval the prototypes of 
moral emotions. First religious ideas identified with sacrificial rites 
offered to secure the intervention of superhuman agencies in the 
control of the element of luck. Folkways as unconscious, spontaneous, 
uncoordinated mass phenomena. The degree of Tightness in these 
depending upon importance of interests. Pain calculus forces reflec- 
tion and observation of some relation between acts and welfare — not 
one of deduction from any great principle, but one of minute efforts to 
live well under existing conditions. Recognition of a permanent 
tendency implicit in some of these theories, explicit in others 20 

CHAPTER III 

Review of the Conception of the Standard and Its Mode of 
Functioning from First Historic Expression to Modern Times 
Periods of social disintegration force a consciousness of standards 
functioning in the life of the people, as (1) repudiation, (2) ^inter- 
pretation, (3) revitalization — Classic instance, Greece in the sixth 
century B. C. — Vitality of Judean standard increased at each re- 
emergence • 26 



6 Summary of Contents 

PAGE 

Section I. The Standard as Conceived in the Following Epochs 

Judea: The core of Judean ethics, the conception of conscience. 

Its postulate, the individual soul — historical development of law as 

standard 27 

Greece and Rome : Plato's standard involved in his theory of ideas. 
The idea of the Good — the all inclusive idea. The desire to embody 
the idea in Socrates. Aristotle's theory — the end of everything real- 
ized in full perfection of itself. The standard a principle of activity 
realizing its essential nature. Stoic " Law of Nature " as standard. 
Comprehensive scope of the Law of Nature. All things in the uni- 
verse measured by this law. Duty emphasized. Summary of the 
Greek conception of the standard : Moral obligation founded on the 
well-being of the individual: virtue a fulfillment of the personality; 
in Stoicism, an ideal standard applicable to all mankind; an ideal, 

compelling conformity of social as well as individual custom 30 

Christianity: Subsumption of Greek and Judean Ideals. Eclecticism 
in Alexandria. Mystical Asceticism. Contributions from Philo's idea 
of the Logos. Resultant Christian Philosophy: the coalescence of 
historical and natural teleology. Man's realization of his relation to 
the Infinite, the end and aim of creation. Conception of the Christian 
ideal by the Christian Fathers, Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alex- 
andria, Origen, his pupil Gregory, and Augustine. The fundamental 
principle of Augustine: that which judges is always superior to 
that which is judged: but that according to which judgment is 
rendered is also superior to that which judges. Participation in 
Divine Intelligence through Divine Grace; illumination. Divine grace 
proportional to the degree of man's moral perfection. Idea, Judg- 
ment, Will are modes of functioning whose unity is the soul. Aban- 
donment to the will of the Divinity the condition of illumination and 
revelation. Arrest of the intellectual development of these conceptions 
by barbarian invasions. Connection in philosophical succession 
between Augustine and Descartes 39 

Section II. Mediaeval Period 

Artistotle termed " the philosopher." The standard viewed by the 
controversialists over the reality of universals. Scotus Erigena's 
theory termed logical pantheism. The degree of universality measures 
worth. Nominalists' theory. Reality of particulars. Abelard's theory 
a modification of the extreme views. John of Salisbury's interpretation 
of the Augustinian conception of the soul's activity as ways of func- 
tioning, the prototype of the English school of associational psy- 
chology. The ancients, the Christian philosophers of the Patristic age, 
mediaeval logicians never confused the states of consciousness, the 
ways of functioning, with the ultimate standard or criterion of life. 
Recognition of a divine principle sustaining the soul's activity through 
contemplation, illumination, enlightenment, grace 55 



Summary of Contents 7 



PAGB 



Thomas Aquinas: Revival of interest in Thomistic philosophy. 
Science forced to consider universals. Acute transformation of Aris- 
totelian conceptions of form in relation to matter. Interpretation of 
Plato's theory of ideas: the mind can effect the purely subjective 
separation by considering in the individual only the universal. The 
human soul does not possess innate conceptions, but its thinking rests 
on the basis of sensuous perceptions and of representations from 
which the active intellect abstracts forms. The actuating principle of 
energy referred to divine essence. The soul is made in the image and 
likeness of God. The recognition of an immanent principle in the 
universe. The things of sense from which human reason takes its 
beginnings of knowledge retain in themselves some trace of the 
imitation of God, inasmuch as they are and are good. The nature of 
the intellect is to grasp the intelligible. Natures and relations are 
eternal Manifestations of God. God commands the good because it is 
good and is recognized as good by His wisdom. Hence the Divine 
Wisdom, the logos, is the ultimate standard 58 

Participation in eternal law is called natural law. This is recog- 
nized by reason, and in conformity with this law rational creatures 
guide their conduct. Natural law apprehended as general principles 
belonging to Eternal Law. Application to particular cases requires the 
use of reason to draw conclusions from these general principles. 
These conclusions are termed human law 63 

The theory concerning the will and the intellect makes abiding with 
God's will identical with man's good. Possibility of man's reaching 
through his intellect the same conception of good as that revealed by 
God 63 

Mysticism: Pantheistic nature of Neo-Platonism : the temporary 
participation in eternal reason. Pan-Psychism regarded by Christian 
philosophers as a menace to metaphysical value of personality. 
German mysticism of Eckhart the beginning of German idealism. 
Christian mysticism of Thomas a Kempis 64 

Summary of Mediaeval Conceptions Influencing the Idea of Stan- 
dard. Will uncorrupted — reason not infallible. Necessity of refining the 
reason. Knowledge the product of reason and revelation. Revelation 
includes truths of ancients, measured by God's revelation in Christ. 
Identification of the idea of good with God. Attainment of happiness 
coincident with perfect knowledge or wisdom. Participation in God's 
nature. The church — the embodiment of grace — the sacraments the 
outward sign of inward grace. The gulf between the natural and 
supernatural mediated by the Word made flesh — historic teleology — 
fulfillment of the law. Idealization of contemplative virtues of Plato 
and Aristotle, the source of asceticism. Necessity of ascetic ideal in 
civilization of barbarians. Systematic accommodation to different 
aspects of human nature. Faith in future life, the integral force. 
Scope and opportunity for the play of intelligence 68 



8 Summary of Contents 

PAGE 

Section III. The Renaissance 

A carrying over of momentum generated in theological energy into 
other fields. Dante's conception of the poet's soul, one in which the 
individual spirit had deepened into a universe within. The fusion of 
ethical and physical prophetic of the transfiguration of nature as a 
manifestation of the divine. Bosanquet's interpretation of the Renais- 
sance: the common error of identifying in point of time the desire 
with its realization. The Renaissance as the fruition of a movement 
centuries old: declaration in dogma of fourth century, of evolution 
as the one supreme principle by which a progressive content does not 
lose anything or become secondary by the fact of this development. 
Distance from these ages is giving perspective adequate to seeing 
the relation of the Renaissance movement to the continuous evolution 
of a universal standard. Nicholas of Cusa's conception of a pur- 
poseful unfolding according to law. Man as microcosm. Nature an 
unfolding of a single principle of movement. The world as a soul- 
possessing articulate whole. Harmonious development — theories of 
self-realization 71 

Giordano Bruno's idea of a God-informed, God-governed universe 
progressively accessible to the human conscience. Conception of 
nature as something worth while led to appreciation of earthly pos- 
sessions as of ultimate value. Problem : Relation of morals to effi- 
ciency. Machiavelli's repudiation of any moral restraint in reaching 
an end 75 

Success as the criterion of all values. Disintegration the result of 
the absence of a unifying ideal. Conception among humanists of the 
worth of general education as the fundamental method of control. 
Erasmus 76 

Section IV. Protestant Revolt 
Effect on the conception of the standard. Interpretation of indi- 
viduality as the right to assign values rather than to ascertain them 
led to first a distrust in institutions, then their repudiation. The 
French Revolution and Rousseau. The Peasant's Revolt in Germany. 
Not yet sufficiently removed in time to allow of seeing the idea in its 
relations. Hobbes' standard of uncompromising egoism. Reaction by 
Cambridge Platonists and by Cumberland — Cumberland's rule "that 
all rationals should aim at the common good of all." Sanction fur- 
nished by nature's enforcement of the above law, thus determining the 
agent's happiness 76 

Section V. Cartesianism 

Descartes' maxim : Everything must be true that is as clear and 
distinct as self-consciousness. Psychological and metaphysical basis of 
his principle 79 

Spinoza's pantheistic conception of the standard. Every event is 
justified by the very fact of its occurrence, which is in immediate 
connection with the supreme necessity. The knowledge of truth 



Summary of Contents 9 



PAGE 



becomes thus the noblest good. The will is identical with the intellect. 
Man is free only as far as ideas either immediately are or can be made 
adequate. Our idea of God or of absolute unity is adequate : our ideas 
of the affections of body are inadequate and can be made adequate 
only by referring them to the idea of God. Effects of Spinoza's 
views: (a) reactionary materialism, (b) a source of German idealism.. 82 

Section VI. English School 

Locke : Psychological method of determining the standard. Locke's 
belief in the permanence and universality of moral truths includes a 
belief that morality might be placed among the demonstrable sciences. 
The English conception of God as law-giver 87 

Berkeley: Principle of universal mind: a living, active mind is 
looked upon as the center and the spring of the universe. Man's 
endeavor to bring his conceptions into harmony with Divine arche- 
types. Butler's and Hutcheson's conceptions 89 

Hume : Denial of a unifying principle. Recognition by Hume of 
the need of a synthesising principle. Ethical principle: so act as to 
excite approbation in a disinterested spectator. Reactionary con- 
ceptions 91 

Section VII. German Idealism 

Kant: Thought constitutes experience: thought reaches beyond 
experience in that it is conscious of its own limitations. This con- 
sciousness of the insufficiency of experience is the telesis that is mani- 
fested in experience. Theory of the Categories as modes of synthe- 
thising : the essential truths in Kant's analysis : unity of consciousness 
and its identity with itself are the necessary conditions for the com- 
bining of a given content into any conceivable kind of experience. 
Recognition of guiding ideas which the process is unable to realize or 
verify. Interpreted in field of conduct, the idea of an intelligible world 
is a point of view beyond the phenomenal which the reason sees itself 
compelled to take up in order to think of itself as practical. The moral 
law presupposes freedom. The categorical imperative as formula for 
conduct. Three-fold development of moral consciousness : act as if 
the motive were to become a universal one : treat personality as an 
end in itself: further an organization of a kingdom of ends. The God 
of rationalism invoked instead of the God of revelation 93 

Hegel: The external world as a manifestation of spirit through 
which it realizes itself. Mind a self-differentiating unity. The abso- 
lute, in its self-alienation in the finite, constitutes what is termed 
nature. Evolution from lower to higher manifestations of the all- 
pervading idea. The standard is the conception of the return of the 
idea to itself — the identity in difference in all existence — the universal 
principle of nature and humanity whose essence in spirit 97 



PAGE 



10 Summary of Contents 

Section VIII. A Re-survey of the Effect of German Idealism on 
the Materialistic Conception of the Standard 

Main principles of materialism. The essentially critical nature of 
the German School. Kant's motive — validating the tools of knowledge. 
The transcendentalism of Kant translated by Fichte into Subjective 
Idealism. Hegel's logic comprehends in ; ts theory of " identity in 
difference," and inclusion of negatives, both Skepticism and Dogma- 
tism 98 

Reactionary influence of nineteenth century thought : Reaction to 
Hegel's philosophy. New cycle of thought begun. Initial conception 
of world forces. Recognition of the natural as a general standard for 
measuring the value of every particular experience. Facts of science 
explained by hypothesis of evolution. Herbert Spencer's theory: his 
celebrated formula. His synthetic philosophy gives no clue as to the 
nature of the implied ascending tendency in transformism. Progress 
remains unexplained. Huxley's denial of the truth of Spencer's 
fundamental thesis — the harmony of the cosmic and ethical process.. 99 

The Neo-Hegelian Movement: Thomas H. Green's thesis opposing 
the conception of the universe as a purely mechanical process. The 
idea of a possible better state of himself — the idea that has yielded to 
man his moral standards. This idea must have place before the 
authority of law or custom can have any meaning for the individual. . 103 

CHAPTER IV 

Section I. The Standard Functioning in National Crises : Influ- 
ence upon National Educational Systems 
China's acceptance and perpetuation of fixed standard. India's con- 
ception of man as a transient mode of the Universal Spirit : its relation 
to the philosophy of quietism. The Greek conception of " man as the 
measure of all things " : the Sophists' teaching but an expression of 
the conditions of the times. Rome's lack of a national system of 
education due to the clash of underlying principles — the Greek ideals 
of life, and the Roman reverence for law. Roman genius provided a 
mode for the transference of ideas never thoroughly assimilated into 
national life. Christian seizure of all existent modes, philosophies, and 
other institutions to convey its message to the world. Universal nature 
of the standard furnished by Christianity permitted the use of all 
modes of transmission. Inherent principles of the doctrine that made 
possible its conquest of the world 106 

Section II. Supplementary Criticism and Interpretation 
Implicit or explicit recognition of a determining principle in all the 
systems reviewed. This recognition analogous to developing self- 
consciousness. This standard intelligible through its workings. Dif- 
ferences in interpretation. Mediaeval philosophy a summary and an 
anticipation. Modern clash of universalism and individualism as in 



Summary of Contents n 



PAGE 

Renaissance. The standard as a way of God in history; the contri- 
butions of Israel, Greece, Rome. The historic church the administrator 
of these great contributions from antiquity. The standard as a way of 
nature: adaptation as purpose. Laws of nature as expressions of 
purpose. Consistency of attributing all possible excellence to the 
Source of all. Essential postulates of this theory. These concepts 
viewed in relation to Pragmatism no 

CHAPTER V 
Educational Implications 

Self-activity the basis of this discussion. Aristotle's conception of 
the characteristic function of man as the end of his existence. This 
activity the means at once of survival and of progress. This pro- 
gressive adaptation, the essence of the self. Man's limitation the 
means of his progress. This perpetual establishing of relationships 
the means at once of self-realization and group solidarity. Effort 
to determine the significance of activities and attainment current in 
civilization, reveals these as the sifted experience of the race, the 
social inheritance, the core of reality in human experience. The 
translation of this into* the child's experience makes him bearer of 
the social purpose. Distribution of the work of transmission among 
the several institutions: the home, the school, the vocation, the state, 
the church. Interchange of influences between these institutions essen- 
tial to the life of the work. Need of defining the unique function of 
each of these institutions as well as providing for their reciprocal 
influences. Curriculum, method, personality of teacher interpreted 
in light of present theory. Primary need of teacher's awareness of 
these interrelations 124 

Bibliography 136 



" According to the established popular usage which the philoso- 
pher considers should be our guide in the naming of things, they 
are called wise who put things in their right order, and control 
them well. Now in all things that are to be controlled and put 
in order to an end, the measure of control and order must be 
taken from an end in view, and the proper end is something good. 
Those arts that lord it over others are called master-building, or 
masterful arts, and the master builders who practice them arro- 
gate to themselves the name of wise men. . . . But because 
these persons deal with the ends in view of certain particular 
things, without attaining to the general end of all things, they 
are called wise in this or that particular thing, as it is said 'As 
a wise architect, I have laid the foundation' (I Cor. Ill, 10) ; 
while the name wise is reserved for him alone who deals with 
the last end of the universe, which is also the first beginning of 
the order of the universe. Hence according to the philosopher, 
it is proper to the wise man to consider the highest causes. 

" Now the last end of everything is that which is extended by 
the prime author, or mover thereof. The prime author and mover 
of the universe is intelligence. Therefore the last end of the 
universe must be the good of the intelligence, and that is truth. 

" ' For this was I born and unto this I came into the world, 
to give testimony to the truth.' "> (John XVIII, 37.) 



1 St. Thomas Aquinas, God and His Creatures. Extracts from Chap. I 
and Chap. II. 



THE CONCEPT STANDARD 

CHAPTER I 
FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES AND PRINCIPLES 

It was intended to give an introductory chapter discussing 
the logical situation in which the standard emerges and functions. 
This involved a description of the logical procedure typical of 
all kinds of judgment. This in turn necessitated establishing 
crucial points in the theory against the contentions of conflicting 
systems of logic. This last effort forced the conviction that the 
different theories meet the crux at different junctures. One 
theory would be so much simpler than another, so much more 
convincing at some point, that it commanded assent; but pursued 
consistently the apparent simple procedure met its crux at a 
later point. Thus the seemingly simple task assumed propor- 
tions beyond the limits of the present dissertation because of both 
its technicality and length. But the study has been useful in 
revealing certain crucial points, in establishing in the attempt 
certain rather well defined conclusions, and in defining certain 
fundamental categories. It is evident that the standard functions 
in every judgment of even the most rudimentary form; 1 also 
that all conduct is the product of judgment viewed in its most 
comprehensive sense. Hence every act is the product of a judg- 
ment in which a standard has functioned. 

An analysis of so-called scientific judgments, ethical or moral 
judgments, economic judgments, and aesthetic judgments proved 
to the writer that all judgments in their last analysis are moral 
judgments: that the so-called other types are secondary, function- 
ing within the former: 2 that judgment in any field involves the 
tacit assumption of social verifiability as a matter of course: 3 
that the standard is the essence of control varying only in the 
aspect or method of control. 



1 Pillsbury, Psychological Theories of Judgment. Psychological Bul- 
letin, August 15, 1907. 

3 Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory. 

s Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory. Chapter by Stuart, Valuation 
as a logical process, Page 323. 

IS 



x 6 The Concept Standard 

If experiences are human experiences they are reflective. An 
analysis of reflective situations reveals conduct as the " co-ordin- 
ating or bringing to a unity of aim and interest the different 
elements of a complex situation." It represents the reaction 
out of a situation when present facts are significant to past and 
future. The impulse becomes idealised. This " reaction of 
induced experiences with the inducing impulse is the psycholog- 
ical basis of moral conduct."* The moral value of an act lies in 
the control of the natural impulse. Moral discipline consists in 
learning how to control. The idea becomes the intelligence that 
controls, the tool of a free agent. The so-called motive is the 
mediated impulse. 

The original impulse completely transformed is habit: the two 
sides, mediate and immediate, have lost their separate existence. 
These habits put at our immediate disposal the results of past 
experience, — at once economizing energy and freeing the agent 
for higher activities. Freedom for is more prophetic of progress 
than freedom from. The standard is the agent's capital of ideas 
that is drawn on by the " energetic " self. Every ultimate type 
of judgment presents a dramatic situation where the plot is evolv- 
ing, employing as a means to the solution, as a working method, 
knowledge of a proved kind. This proved knowledge is expressed 
as judgments of the factual kind. In the process you cannot 
shear off deduction from induction. Upon the student seeking 
knowledge of this process of control, it is incumbent to know 
how and where the inductive process is guided by deductive 
considerations. This is the technique of modern science. Some- 
thing of the depth and significance of a study of the concept of 
standard is revealed in the last statement. The ground of chal- 
lenge for all truth lies here. Realizing the difficulty of the 
problem, it is still in keeping to state that the attempt to study 
it is justified by the fact that that which gives man the maximum 
of control, is the knowledge of the process of control. 

The difference in the activities of different persons or of the 
same person in different circumstances is one of varying degrees 
of control present in the determining process. The onlooker 
speaks of the character of the person whose actions he observes. 
The enlightened say, " We have no right to judge the act of 



Dewey, Syllabus on Ethics. Page 10. 



Fundamental Categories and Principles 17 

another because we cannot look into his heart and see the motive 
that prompted it," the charitable say, " We can forgive the doer 
but not the deed," and the wise say, " Judge not lest ye be judged." 
And the meaning of all these expressions becomes manifest if 
we reflect upon the nature of the situation that precedes the 
act. .We realize that because acts proceed from character, " they 
are not a mere series of separate things, one after another, but 
form the whole conduct." Character we think of as a way of 
acting, while conduct is the executed way. Character is the 
individual's potentiality for action and includes all the tendencies 
which taken together constitute his power of action whether 
impulsive, habitual, or reflective. Knowing the character and the 
circumstances conditioning the activity, we can predict the act. 
A " person of character " is one whose technique of control of 
his impulses makes him master of the situation — in other words, 
responsible to the demands society has a right to make on him. 
He must have the power of appreciation, which means he must 
have the means of measuring values in the situation in which he 
is called to act. These principles of measuring values are part 
of his technique of control — a fundamental part : a correct appli- 
cation of these to the existing conditions is another part. When 
we presume to say that we know a person's character, we imply 
that we know his principles of estimating value and his ability 
to apply them to ordinary conditions. Given certain conditions, 
we presume to count on the impulse stimulated by these, and from 
former similar experiences we can count on the outcome of the 
interplay of this particular impulse, with impulses induced 
thereby, and can predict the overt act of the individual. The 
induced experiences we call reason, and because these induced 
experiences measure value we call them the standard. These 
induced impulses — ideas, we say — become the law, the controlling 
power of the immediate impulse. They are real in that they make 
themselves felt by checking and determining in what form, and 
under what conditions, the impulse may be satisfied. They deter- 
mine and measure the value of the impulse; they say to it: you 
are not what you are alone, or in yourself, but your value is 
what it is in relation to us. 5 Thus the impulse striving for 
expression, the induced impulses each with its own momentum 



Dewey, Syllabus. Page 26. 



iS The Concept Standard 

or impulsive quality, struggling also for expression, form a 
situation, the whole process of which is one of discovering and 
applying the standard — a process of estimating value which 
emerges finally in the overt act. 

The overt act in the degree of its significance as true or false 
as verified by the criterion, becomes a reference for new situa- 
tions, thereby increasing the worth of the ideal. The vagueness 
so often associated with the word ideal is due to the fact that 
the initial impulse in instances is too weak to act properly to 
the summoned impulses, which therefore become fleeting fancies, 
vague schemes, " castles in the air," so often associated with 
the popular use of idealist, or dreamer. When the initial impulse 
is strong, the summons is strong, and if there be abundant experi- 
ence to respond, the interaction is vigorous, and a denned project 
emerges as a significant act. We may conceive of the ideas 
summoned by the initial impulse, each bringing with it the residua 
of the emotional content of the original experience, the whole 
forming a cumulative emotional content which absorbs that of 
the initial impulse and finally gives to the project the momentum 
necessary to convert it into the overt act. 

It seems perfectly evident that impulsive acts are characteristic 
of certain temperaments which seem racial in their origin. Ac- 
companying a quick response to objective stimuli, there is a 
sweep of emotion attendant upon the initial impulse that carries 
all before it and expresses itself in almost immediate action. 
With such natures there is apparently a potentiality of high 
degree. What is necessary is an idea of tremendous content to 
check the onrushing original impulse, thereby giving time to 
marshal other ideas with their accompanying emotional content 
presumably of high power, to determine and define the project 
for action. This controlling idea must be a standard adequate 
both to check the impulse and to direct its intellectual harnessing- 
in order that the act expressing the process should be worthy of 
the endowment of such natures. 

The reflective situations seem the mediating influence by which 
actions are raised to successively higher levels. Actions range 
from the impulsive outburst of the child to the deliberate highly 
controlled expression of the scientist, diplomat, or philosopher. 
And each product of human activity bears the stamp of the human 
soul, conceive the soul as we may. The alternative conclusion 



Fundamental Categories and Principles 19 

would make mankind either the hypnotized subject of mighty 
chance, or a cosmically predetermined organism. The tiniest bit 
of humanity in the midst of its helplessness teaches the absurdity 
of either of these last conclusions. Each successive thrust of the 
infant's hand is the expression of the import of the former 
thrust. Each movement of the head reports the meaning that 
directs the next. To detect the presence of this living control 
is to identify it with that which makes us a human being. 

All records of human experience testify to its recognition. The 
difference in civilization has been in the mode of interpreting it. 



CHAPTER II 

THE STANDARD IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES FROM 
THE GENETIC POINT OF VIEW 

The concept of evolution as applied to morality has given rise 
to vigorous theories concerning the genesis of custom standards. 
The entire discussion forces the question: Has the actual course 
of human evolution on the whole been from lower to higher, and 
if so is this movement based on something permanent in the nature 
of things, or in the forces that move the human mind? 1 

Opposing the view that the origin of moral conceptions lies 
in the individual's own conscience, these theorists argue that 
before there is self-reproach or remorse, there must be ideals of 
right and wrong derived from group approval or disapproval 
of certain acts. Savages think in herds. " Society is the school 
in which men learn to distinguish between right and wrong. 
The head master is custom and the lessons are the same for all. 
The first moral judgments were pronounced by public opinion : 
public indignation and public approval are the prototypes of the 
moral emotions." 2 To account for developed conscience found 
in savage tribes, remoteness of origin of the inherited body of 
custom is assigned as cause. This inherited body of custom 
composes the standards of conduct. No one standard is given 
any place in this theory. 

Folkways are unconscious, spontaneous, unco-ordinated mass- 
phenomena, currents of similarity, concurrence and mutual con- 
tribution. 3 In the folkways, whatever is, is right. The degree 
of Tightness depends on the relative importance of interests. The 
morality of the group is the sum of taboos and prescriptions in 
the folkways by which right is denned. Morals are not intuitive : 
they are historical, institutional, and empirical. These folkways 
are not creations of human purpose and will, but are like the 
products of natural forces accidentally set in motion. They are 



1 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1906. 

2 Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, 1906. 

3 Sumner, Folkways, 1907. 



The Standard in Primitive Societies 21 

subject to " a strain of consistency with each other, because they 
all answer their several purposes with less friction and antagon- 
ism when they cooperate and support each other." 

The strain of consistency finds expression in institutions. 
Through suggestion and suggestibility, mass-phenomena result. 
Suggestion has no rationale in its method of selection and con- 
trol : an eclipse has changed the entire course of progress. 

" Men in groups are under life conditions : they have needs 
which are similar under the state of life conditions: the relation 
of the needs to the conditions are interests under the head of 
hunger, love, vanity, fear : efforts of numbers to satisfy interests 
at the same time produce mass-phenomena, which are folkways 
by virtue of uniformity, repetition, and wide concurrence. The 
folkways are attended by pleasure or pain according as they are 
well fitted for the purpose. Pain forces reflection and observa- 
tion of some relation between acts and welfare. At this point the 
prevailing world philosophy, beginning with goblinism, suggests 
explanations and inferences that become entangled with judg- 
ments of expediency. However, the folkways take on a philosophy 
of right living and a life policy of welfare. 4 " Then they become 
mores, and they may be developed by inferences from the philos- 
ophy or the rules in the endeavor to satisfy needs without pain. 
Hence they undergo improvement and are made consistent with 
each other." 5 

" The real process is not one of deduction from any great 
principle. It is one of minute efforts to live well under existing 
conditions." The philosophy of welfare is purely economic : 
democracy is the result of an economic demand for men, when 
earth is underpopulated : humanitarianism is a willingness to 
adopt ideas and institutions making competition of life easy and 
kindly, only when men cease to crowd on one another. All 
manifestations of what other philosophies regard as man's higher 
nature, according to this theory have an economic origin and 
are treated as distorted hindrances to man's rational progress. 
The element of luck or chance was conceived as over and above 
man's manipulation, and hence ascribed to superhuman agencies. 
These were appeased by sacrifices. These delusions became 
poetical and fanciful in nature. The sacrifices were attended by 



* Italics ours. 
•Folkways. Page 34. 



22 The Concept Standard 

rites. This ritual is thus seen to have its origin in conditions of 
welfare. In this ritual, according to this theory is the beginning 
of religion. In time the " authority of religion and that of custom 
coalesced into one indivisible obligation. This individual obliga- 
tion was the custom standard sanctioned by religious rites. Men 
became dazzled by the fancy and poetry of ritualistic phenomena — 
by the bubbles they themselves had blown and continually leaped 
to catch." 

Elaboration of these ideas but confirms the fact that the inter- 
pretation of primitive phenomena is not revealed in studying the 
origins but is unconsciously imposed by the observer of these 
facts. The popular expediency standard dominant in an economic 
or industrial age, such as the nineteenth century has been, is used 
as the interpretation of these studies of origins. The signifi- 
cance of these is not discovered in the process, but in the original 
hypothesis in the mind of him who studies. 

One of these theorists 6 says : " We see the man-who-can-do- 
things elevated to a social hero whose success overrides all other 
considerations. Where that code is adopted it calls for arbitrary 
definitions, false conventions, and untruthful character." The con- 
cluding paragraph in the same author's work shows the presence 
of a higher standard in the writer : " The antagonism between a 
virtue policy and a success policy is a constant ethical problem. 
The Renaissance in Italy shows that although moral traditions 
may be narrow and mistaken, any morality is better than moral 
anarchy. Moral traditions are guides which no one can afford to 
neglect. They are in the mores and they are lost in every great 
revolution of the mores. Then the men are morally lost. Their 
natures, desires, and means become false, and even the notion of 
crime is arbitrary and untrue. If all try the policy of dishonesty, 
the result will be the firmest conviction that honesty is the best 
policy. The mores aim always to arrive at correct notions of 
virtue. In so far as they reach correct results, the virtue policy 
proves to be the only success policy." 

A more conservative view and a more philosophic and more 
highly organized theory 7 considers the field of inquiry to include 
quasi-instinctive judgment based on the unthinking acceptance 
of tradition and the profoundest theory of the thinker seeking a 



8 Sumner. 

7 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution. 



The Standard in Primitive Societies 23 

rational basis of conduct and an intelligible formula to express the 
end of life. Between the two extremes is recognized a play of 
forces remodelling custom and substituting deliberately accepted 
principle. The conception of the good becomes the prime inquiry 
and " the business of comparative ethics is to determine the gen- 
eric character and principal specific variations of this conception 
as actually held by men at different places at different times. 
Studies in ethical evolution reveal variations and diversity of 
moral judgment but finally surprise the student with a more far- 
reaching uniformity." In line with this thought and partly 
accounting for it, is the tremendous bearing of purely economic 
changes upon ethical conceptions. This is just dawning upon an 
awakened social consciousness. 

In line with this finding of a far-reaching uniformity, this theory 
recognizes the growth of will over desire. "By desire we are to 
understand impulse informed by the anticipation of an event; by 
will, a reaction of character to ends in which relatively stable and 
permanent satisfaction is found. Its authority over desire, we call 
self-control, but it is rather control by self as a whole of one or 
other of the impulses which conflict with its permanent tendency. 8 
It is only when this relatively stable and balanced adoption of 
permanent ends or abiding principles is psychologically possible 
that the inculcation of general rules could have any meaning." 9 

This theory recognizes an intrinsic difference in apparently 
similar institutions, due to the ethical development of one and the 
unconscious growth of the other. This difference is quite sure to 
emerge in subsequent history. The higher value of ethically con- 
ceived and developed institutions depends on the firmness with 
which they are held, owing to the fact of their being the product 
of man's constant endeavor. Their formation contains the means 
of their defense. Such ethical standards react upon social organi- 
zation, the result of which reaction forms a large part of world 
history. On the other hand mere favor of circumstances rather 
than any moral quality accounts for the presence of the custom- 
made institution. The term morality qualified by primitive is 
rather grudgingly applied to mere custom-standards. " The pow- 
ers of magic have no moral purpose and the spirits of animism 
are neither moral nor immoral." They are guided by the law of 



8 This suggests T. H. Green after Aristotle. 
8 Ibid. Page 14. 



24 



The Concept Standard 



retaliation. It is only with the recognition of moral obligation to 
protect life, to guard property, to redress wrong that the element 
of morality really enters. In tracing ethical development the 
emergence of the spiritual ideal of religion is reached. This ideal 
is described as furnishing a standard that left no room for pre- 
viously recognized virtues of enmity. The materialistic Deity dis- 
appears : God is spiritual and rules by love. The notion of retri- 
bution is suppressed. 

The best interpretation 10 of these seems to be in line with these 
conclusions. There is no such thing as private rights in primitive 
morality. These emerge in Greek times and legally only in Roman 
law. The first control was that of old men. Respect for law first 
emerges as respect for the representatives of social order. Custom 
was projected in old men and women, priests and gods as repre- 
senting permanent interests over and against the tendency to vary 
in the individual. This tendency to vary, genetically speaking, is 
the origin of the moral situation. What lies behind the so-called 
sympathetic resentment is the conflict between the approval of the 
clan, and the immediate strong desire. The differentia of the 
ethical situation is a certain discrepancy between certain ten- 
dencies of individuals left to themselves, and the expectation and 
acquirement of the individual with reference to the customs of the 
tribe and clan as such. 

Certain fundamental categories are recognized as the common 
element in primitive and present situations. Value, control, and 
standard are probably the most fundamental. These were recog- 
nized by the group as a group and are hence objective. A type of 
good or value was generally accepted. This common good was 
the standard which regulated all conduct. Common goals were 
enforced on the individuals as his ends. Tribal emblems, symbols, 
insignia, implements, rites, and cults existed for the individual 
exemplification of customs of the tribe. The respect for the aged 
as the embodiment of these customs grew through these rites to 
the ancestor worship so universal in primitive peoples. Taboos 
are probably the outcome of the group enforcement of custom 
upon some individual's tendency to express an individual end. 
The whole line of effort was to direct the attention of the indi- 
vidual to the tribal goods. 

10 Dewey, Lectures on Moral and Political Philosophy. Unpublished, 
1908. 



The Standard in Primitive Societies 25 

The reconciliation between social duty and personal right has 
been the desideratum in all stages of human development. Prim- 
itive morality must possess the two elements, though not so highly 
developed. There must be value appropriated by individuals as 
well as a sense of social order through which these rights are 
secured. 

Certain definite limitations of primitive morality which tended 
to give wrong direction to subsequent development may be 
summed up under four heads : ( 1 ) limited area of moral ideas ; 
(2) the basis of moral responsibility was wrongly conceived in the 
quasi-religious belief in the animistic and magical rites by which 
group interests were conserved; (3) the identification of morals 
with custom, and of breach of morals with breach of custom, 
tending to the ignoring of the central position occupied by char- 
acter in the moulding of conduct; (4) accidental acts were not 
differentiated from voluntary acts. 

Latent in these theories is a recognition of a permanent ten- 
dency in the individual, which is one way of implying the telisis of 
a guiding principle or standard. 



CHAPTER III 

REVIEW OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE STANDARD 

AND ITS MODE OF FUNCTIONING FROM FIRST 

HISTORIC EXPRESSION TO MODERN TIMES 

From the studies of primitive peoples, among which studies 
might be mentioned those of Westermark, Hobhouse, Sumner, 
Spencer, Andrew Lang, and from the researches of historic 
peoples by such men as Wundt, Waitz, Ladd, and Jowett, the 
statement is forced that religion and morality have developed 
simultaneously, that man is essentially a religious being. Theories 
have been advanced as to the genesis of this feeling, but all 
theories start with the fact as found existing. Several of these 
have been met in the chapter on the Genesis of Custom Standards. 
The point is this : all concede the fact that no society has been 
found without so-called rites that are expressions of belief in a 
Power that controls in variously-conceived manner and degree 
the destinies of man. Man's relation to this power forms his re- 
ligion ; this religion is a sanction for codes of behavior which are 
expressions of the morality of the race. 

These elements, religion and morality, having developed simul- 
taneously, were not differentiated until the uncritical acceptance 
of traditional morality had been rudely shaken by the disintegra- 
tion of social forces. This breakdown of moral sanctions has 
inevitably brought about a crucial criticism directed to the dis- 
covery of a standard that would hold the dissolving elements to- 
gether. The classic instance of this condition is in the breakdown 
of the traditional Greek theory of the moral sanctions, of the 
divine basis of virtue, and the authoritative supremacy of the law. 
In such epochs there is a strong skeptical movement of speculative 
thought which gathers into a philosophy the symptoms of disease 
in the society affected, and exhibits the cause to be the inadequacy 
of existent standards as principles of control. 

The common inheritance of moral ideas, the habits of a people, 
become the objects of thought and of critical analysis in the sit- 
uation. The skeptic asks whence comes this common inheritance 

26 



Review of Conception of the Standard 



27 



or stock of moral ideas. Their beginning is obscure. In the his- 
tory of the people or race, these moral ideas have been slowly 
evolved " by religion, by poetry, by law, having their foundation 
in the natural affections and in the necessity of some degree of 
truth and justice in a social state." 1 

The negative movement of thought is not, as some suppose, the 
cause of the breakdown of established customs and standards, but 
is a reflex of tendencies 2 actively at work in the social organism. 
The claim may be true that such skeptical philosophy often hastens 
the dissolution it attempts to stay. By further invalidating the 
mode of control which had operated successfully in previous ages 
without offering an adequate substitute, the progress of dissolution 
may be accelerated. 

Two alternatives for this acceleration of disruption are the 
revivifying of the old standard, or the substitution of a new prin- 
ciple of control. The most striking instance of the first, a standard 
constantly gaining in meaning and power at each vicissitude of 
the Jewish people, is found in the Old Testament. Scripture is 
full of testimony to the successive re-emergence of the standard 
through disaster. " When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of 
Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary, 
Israel his dominion." " He will be mindful forever of his cov- 
enant." " All his commandments are faithful, confirmed forever 
and ever, made in truth and equity." " He hath commanded his 
covenant forever." 

Section I 

The Earliest Times 

Judea 

The core of Judean ethics is the conception of Conscience, or 
Moral Consciousness. Conscience implies the possibility of re- 
sistance to the Divine will. This possibility postulates the indi- 
vidual soul, and thus confers upon it an independent value, a dig- 
nity, we might say, that can never be conceived under a theory 

1 See theories of origin given in Chap. II in the present volume. 

2 See argument that in a dynamic society, changes are rapid, readjust- 
ment necessarily rapid, that men grow careless of always measuring the 
force, of estimating values, that standards are discredited. Ross, Social 
Psychology. 



28 The Concept Standard 

that treats the human spirit as merely a transient mode of the 
Universal Spirit. " Wherever the conscience is regarded as re- 
vealing a supreme authority, there complete Pantheism becomes 
impossible, and individual spirits become of quite infinite signifi- 
cance and worth. Looking for the relation between man and God 
at the very point where the two most certainly meet ; viz., in the 
sense of Duty, the Hebrew saw in wilful wrong-doing something 
far deeper than vice ; he saw sin there, and sin meant the estrange- 
ment between God and the Individual soul." 3 

" Him whom to love is to obey and keep His great command." 
This identification of his will with that of the One God was still 
a possibility for man. The conception of One God imparted and 
not gained by thought, left to human reason alone, was broken up 
" into many measurables " — polytheism. Then to the Hebrew 
did God announce himself as the " God of their Fathers." To 
this rude people the conception must be the Mightiest of all. "As 
yet God could give to His people no other religion, no other 
law than one through obedience to which they might hope to be 
happy or through disobedience to which they must fear to be 
unhappy. For as yet their regard went no further than this earth." 4 
The Old Testament becomes a history of this early people's strug- 
gle to maintain the standard as revealed in external command, 
and of the rewards and punishments which Jehovah addressed to 
the senses. Thus Revelation became to the race, what some con- 
ceive Education to be to the child. " Moses was sent to the 
Israelite people of that time, and his commission was perfectly 
adapted to the knowledge, capacities, yearnings of the then 
existent Israelitish people." 5 The Divine essence of this Revela- 
tion is manifest to succeeding generations in that it contained 
nothing that procrastinated the progress of the people to whom 
it was given. Much that developing reason was capable of appre- 
hending was implicit in its nature. When contact with other 
races of different levels forced the consciousness of value of their 
spiritual possession, not always immediately, we witness a re- 
emergence of their standard with an ever-increasing vigor because 
of its enrichment through the implicit becoming explicit. Their 
conceptions became " expanded, ennobled, rectified " most con- 



3 Hibbert Lectures. 1893. Chas. B. Upton. Pages 244-245. 
* Lessing, Education of the Human Race. Page 11. 
6 Ibid. Page 23. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 2 g 

spicuously possibly — " in captivity under the wise Persians," when 
the Israelites conceived their God in connection with the " Being 
of all Beings " 6 that the Persian reason had evolved : Jehovah 
became God. 

It has been urged by various writers that the way this action 
of God on the individual spirit manifested itself in the Hebrew 
conception was defective in that the means was an external com- 
mandment. The standard was conceived as being imposed from 
without rather than emerging out of the individual con- 
sciousness. But as the experience of the Hebrew race became 
fuller and richer, the ideal was awakened or elicited from this 
experience, was consciously realized as the authority of the 
Divinity latently present in the very essence and nature of the soul. 
This did not come until later in their history, and the charge 
may be true that the concentration of all intense interest on the 
moral and spiritual relation of each particular soul to the Divine 
source, led to comparative neglect of the objective cosmos. A 
greater recognition of this might have lifted the plane of activity 
to a level nearer the Source. 

Mackenzie speaks of the readily traced development from cere- 
monial law, through the Ten Commandments, to the deep and 
more inward principles represented by the Psalms and the later 
prophets, reaching finally the principle of love in Christianity. 
But in this line of development " the deeper principle is always 
formulated by the voice of some prophet speaking more or less 
definitely in the name of the Lord." The idea of divine law 
remains fundamental throughout. Even when the inner principle 
of Christianity is set against the external rules of the older 
system, it still appears in the form of a definite enactment — a 
' New Commandment.' " It was said by them of old time, 
* * * But I say unto you." The appeal is still to an au- 
thoritative law. Surely no standard of antiquity has proved its 
vitality so well, or so clearly demonstrates the features of the 
moral judgment as set forth by Mackenzie. 7 

(i) It develops from customs, through law, to reflective 
principles. 

(2) It develops from the judgment on external acts to the judg- 
ment on the inner purpose and character. 



Lessing, Education of the Human Race. 
Mackenzie. Ethics. Page 126. 



3° 



The Concept Standard 



(3) It develops from ideas peculiar to the circumstances of 
particular tribes and nations to ideas that have a universal 
validity. 

Greece 

Plato's standard is evolved in his theory of ideas. The Idea 
is the pattern the mind possesses as a manifestation of the Logos. 
The idea of all ideas is the idea of Good — identified with the 
Logos. This is conceived as the One in the Many, the Same in 
the Other : it is the universal, the World-Soul. The only existence 
or reality that we can perceive or know is a unity that includes 
difference, a multiplicity that is nevertheless a unity. These con- 
ceptions all express the principle that all existence, the world 
itself, must be regarded as a combination of an ideal element, that 
element which alone can be truly known or thought, and the 
matter or formless element which is necessary to temporal and 
spatial existence, the presence of which makes it impossible to 
know any concrete thing completely. The many ideas thus con- 
ceived in the synthesis of Form or Limit and Unformed or Un- 
limited, are differentiations of the all-inclusive Idea of Good. 

The Idea in Greek usage is associated always in some way 
with unity; as the idea of the mind itself — the mind being that 
which unifies the multiplicity of sense ; 8 as the idea in each thing, 
the essential element by which alone it is possible to compare it, 
classify it. Without ideas, the world lacks coherence. A person 
without them is borne on the wings of opinion. Such a one is 
described as a man that may be said " to know and not to know 
at the same time," or again as " not one at all but rather many 
and infinite as the changes that take place in him." 9 But let this 
person attain to reality through ideas, and he will be able to dis- 
cern the One in the Many, the whole in the all. " The supreme 
idea is the ideal or perfect form of knowledge which would render 
intelligible the whole of reality." 10 " The greatest and noblest 
truths have no outward images of themselves visible to men." 11 
It is by means of this idea that man is able to see beyond him- 
self, to discern the common good of all, which as an absolute 



8 Plato's Psychology in its Bearing on the Will. Mind. April, 1908. 
Page 195. 

9 Thecetetus. 194 B. 199 A. 

10 Plato's Psychology in its Bearing on Will. Mind. Page 196. 

11 Politctus. 285. E. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 31 

standard determines the true nature of all with which he has 
to do. 12 Plato shows how this notion of an absolute standard can 
be attained. Through the study of number the mind is drawn 
away from the things of sense to the universal and permanent. 
The constant dialogue of the Mind with itself (dialectic), by 
which the essence of a thing is comprehended, and consequently 
its relation to the whole, enables man to get that grasp of reality 
which alone is self-sufficing and complete. The Idea or Form 
of the Good is at once the standard of reason, and the aim or 
end at which every creature aims, for " it is the nature of the 
soul's activity to grasp the truth, to do everything for the sake 
of it." It is the motive of conduct, actively seeking realization 
in act. " There is no more drifting when reason takes the helm." 13 
If the motive be the Idea of the Good, only then will the means 
be rightly chosen ; if not, the separate acts or resolutions have no 
standard to guide them and the life aiming at no clear end, is 
the sport of chance. 14 Self-mastery is discussed in the Laws, 
and in the Charmides, and seems to be determined by self-knowl- 
edge. The attainment to it then must be through a conscious 
development of mind, brought about by the earnest striving for 
the truth through reflection. Plato continually emphasizes the 
necessity of knowing anything fully. To understand anything 
fully, it must be known in more than its material conditions : 
they are merely "con-causes." (Timaeus 46 D.). It must be 
known from the point of view of its end: the Idea determining 
particular existence is eventually referable to the all-inclusive 
Idea of the Good (Republic) or the Will of the Creator (in the 
Timaeus). 

" The Creator desired that all things should be as like unto 
himself as possible. This is, in the truest sense, the origin of 
becoming and of the universe, as we shall do well in believing 
on the testimony of wise men. * * * And when the Father 
who begat it perceived the created image of the eternal Gods 
that it had motion and life he was well pleased and in his joy 
bethought him to make it more nearly like its pattern. So he 
bethought him to make a moving image of eternity " — becoming 



12 Republic. VII. 517 C. 

13 Plato's Psychology in its Bearing on Will. Mind. Page 199. 

14 cf. Rep. VII, 519 C, 561 B., Referred to in Mind, April, 1908. Page 
200. See Chap. I of this present volume. 



2)2 The Concept Standard 

in Time. Thus the soul is conceived as having more of the One 
and less of the Many, than anything else in the Universe. Every- 
thing in the world is made after the pattern of ideas : the product 
in some way determining the process. In none of the Greek 
philosophers is it so easy to determine the principle that acts as 
universal standard. This universal standard differentiating, de- 
termines the standards of beauty, harmony, order, law. 

In the Symposium the supreme principle assumes the guise of 
beauty. The fusion of the ideas of the good and the beautiful 
in the Greek theory of Art, would form a treatise in itself. Suffice 
it to say at this point that it is difficult to determine which is 
inclusive of the other — as the two seem seldom dissociated. The 
excellence of human life seemed to demand the identification of 
the good with the beautiful. The progress of him aspiring to the 
conception of the beautiful must be through appreciation of con- 
crete forms embodying progressively more of the one, and less 
of the many, until when he comes toward the end he will " sud- 
denly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty {and this Socrates is 
the final cause of all our former toils) , a beauty absolute, separate, 
simple, and everlasting which without diminution and without 
increase or any change is imparted to the evergrowing and perish- 
ing beauties of all other things. * * * Remember how in 
that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, 
he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty but realities 
(for he has not hold of an image but of a reality) and bringing 
forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and 
be immortal, if mortal man may." 

Before leaving the consideration of Plato's standard as the Idea 
of the Good — there must be noted in him, a desire to give embodi- 
ment of his ideal, so that the idea might have compelling force. 
The difficulties present themselves in offering a standard for most 
men, and the necessity is conceived in the Meno and in the 
Republic, of discovering one who is capable of educating states- 
men. " If there be such a one he may be said to be among the 
living what Homer says that Tiresias was among the dead : ' He 
alone has understanding, but the rest flit as shades, for he in 
respect of his excellence will be like a reality among shadows.' " 
(Meno, 99 B — ioo A.) Such was Socrates to Plato. It is easy 
to believe with him, because it is a never-ceasing source of wonder 
to the heirs of succeeding centuries of wisdom that the potentiality 



Revieiv of Conception of the Standard 33 

of man could have been realized to the degree it was in Socrates. 
He seemed to have divined the truth of coming ages so completely 
as to become its manifestation. His complete abandonment to the 
pursuit of what he considered the Good of life, made him not only 
a prophet of the best of coming ages, but the embodiment of his 
vision. He himself seemed the standard to many of his followers. 
Plato, Aristotle, — these names associated for all time with the 
sources of that stream of thought that for twenty-five centuries 
has expressed the meaning and destiny of the western world — 
suggest at once one of the two great channels in which it has 
flowed. " Sand bars and green island divide, broad shining shal- 
lows link together, but the deep currents lie apart, here one limpid 
with the blue of heaven, yonder one brown with the soil of earth. 
We call these streams by various names as they flow down between 
the banks of centuries, — they widen, they narrow, they grow shal- 
lower, they deepen. The blue catches more of heaven's own 
color, and again it fades pale; the brown waters shimmer under 
some wind-swept sky like burnished metal. Astonishing change 
and variety everywhere appear, but no man confuses the two 
main currents. For these two currents are figures of the two 
fundamental types of human thought. The one type represents 
the experience of man with his ideas and ideals, the other his 
experience with the world of sense." 15 The blue catches heaven's 
own color in Plato's thought. Because at once so deep and wide, 
broad, shining shallows link the two streams in Aristotle's time, 
and the blue fades pale that carried Plato's thought. Still no one 
confuses the current: the brown waters from the shallows have 
still the blue, the men can gaze at the softened tone and wonder 
whether it is of earth or of heaven. For Aristotle made concrete 
Plato's conceptions. There is more of " the soil," the things of 
sense, in Aristotle's philosophy. Aristotle attempted to rationalize 
the existent order. Plato had tried to interpret the particular by 
the universal ; Aristotle reversed the process. To deal with these 
particulars, Aristotle constructed a logic which enabled the human 
mind to pass by means of middle terms from the particular to 
the more general. Hence back of Aristotle's logic, is the fact 
that all that rests on universal truth : " that all knowledge whether 
' deductive ' or ' inductive ' is arrived at by the indispensable aid 



15 Democracy and Prophetic Idealism. Phi Beta Kappa Address, 
1907, Stanford. Edward Lambe Parsons. 



34 The Concept Standard 

of general propositions." 16 Through this reasoning, Aristotle 
dealt with Greek life as it was. The goods are those of Greek 
life. The ideal he proposes is not an abstract ideal, or one that 
appears in violent contrast with the customs of his time. " It 
is an ideal born, so to speak, of what was actual, in harmony 
with Greek life and adapted to its form of government and 
classes of society." 17 His doctrine of the mean is the essence 
of concreteness. The whole of morality so called consists in 
willing to observe in all things, the due mean, and in actually 
observing it. The aim of life is neither to keep the gaze directed 
on some abstract ideal of goodness, " nor to sink into the selfish 
individualism of the Cynic, but to realize our human nature as 
members of society, in all the ways in which psychological analysis 
shows it right to be realized." 

In working out this idea of realisation, his general principle of 
activity is discerned. Everything in the universe is striving for 
realization. This becoming is the process in which potentiality 
(dunamis) is transformed continually into activity (energeia). 
From the lowest types of inorganic life, through the vegetative 
and animal world, through the varying degrees of man's poten- 
tiality, this force is at work. Its higher manifestation is in man's 
rational life; its highest in speculative thinking. The teleology 
of Aristotle regards the end of a thing as realized in full per- 
fection of itself. 

This immanent principle, itself static, controls the cosmos ; 
makes it a universe. Into this conception, self-realization as man's 
end may be thought of as the standard. But Aristotle constantly 
repeats that the virtuous man is the rule and measure of the 
Good. In the case of this ideal man it is not opinion (as with 
"most men") that decides, but right reason realized and living 
in him. " Being truly man, he is pleased with what ought to 
please him, he distinguishes clearly the good from the evil, he 
is the rule and measure of things." 18 But Aristotle reasons : We 
are to measure man by his characteristic function, that which is 
special or dominant in a thing being always the end for which 
it came into being. Man's characteristic function is ability to 
draw inferences by the aid of middle terms — to reason. Man 



16 Wallace, Outlines of Aristotle. Page 10. 

17 Janet, Problems of Philosophy. Page 20. 

18 Janet. Page i8ff. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 35 

has two ends : the application of practical reason and the applica- 
tion of pure reason. In the first his activity is in the exercise of 
practical intelligence on things immersed in matter and subject 
to the incalculable influence of necessity and chance. This 
activity constitutes " happiness for man." This lower or purely 
human happiness is the end of conduct or practical life — of mor- 
ality as he defines it. But in the exercise of pure reason on the 
data of necessary truth — is perfect happiness, an exceptional 
state — for the rare man, and for him only in rare moments. This 
contemplation transcends our sensible nature, and partakes of the 
nature of the Divine. Our passions are an obstacle to this state, 
which lies in intelligence alone. The " moral virtues " govern 
our sensible nature, hence the moral life is the promise and 
manifestation of the intellectual or divine life. To the extent 
that reason enters into the control of the sensible nature, it is 
then at once a manifestation and a promise of absorption or con- 
templation of divine life, immortality. So in spite of the asser- 
tion that the " virtuous man " is the standard, he is the embodi- 
ment of the standard, that principle of activity whose latent 
potentiality is further actualized in the rare moments of the 
rare man in contemplation. 

The Stoic " Law of Nature " as Standard 
" Socrates sat for the portrait of the Stoic sage ; the Stoics 
strove earnestly to build up their inner man after the pattern 
of the virtuous wise man, whose lineaments they borrowed from 
the transfigured and lofty form of Socrates." 19 Regarding them- 
selves as followers of Socrates, in making virtue the highest good, 
the Stoics nevertheless introduced important modifications into 
Greek philosophy. Their logic differs from that of Plato and 
Aristotle in denying the objective reality of Concepts. The view 
they take is largely that known in the Middle Ages as Nominal- 
ism. 20 The concept is purely subjective, formed by a process 
of abstraction. " The individual as such is the only thing which 
has real existence; the universal concept is a purely subjective 
product of the process of thought." Genera are merely conceptions 
of ours and nothing real. 21 Concepts are deprived of all relation 



19 Noack, Psyche, V. 1, 1862, Page 13. Quoted in Ueberweg, I. 187.^,1 

20 Ueberweg. Page 193. 

21 Stockel, History of Philosophy, Part I, page 135. Translated by 
T. A. Finlay. 



36 The Concept Standard 

to the essential being of things, and are thus reduced to mere 
generalized sensuous perceptions. Only a judgment, never a 
conception, can have truth. The Stoics occupied themselves with 
the question of a criterion of truth. This they found in the 
Apprehension: this is attained when the object is represented with 
such clearness and force that the truth of the representation can- 
not be denied. 

" The leading power or governing part of the soul is for them 
not only that which makes perceptions, out of excitation of the 
individual organs of sensation, but also that which by its assent 
(in the judgment) transforms excitations of the feelings into 
activities of the will." 22 

The highest purpose of human life is not contemplation but 
action, which is living according to Nature. Nature as the Stoic 
conceived it, is used in a sense to include not only natural law 
as we know it, but also eternal and divine law. In nature this 
law manifests itself. All things in the universe are measured 
by this law: it is the standard to which human action must con- 
form if man would fulfil the purpose of his existence. The 
fundamental law of human conduct may be expressed in the 
formula : Thou shalt live according to' Nature, i. e., according 
to the Divine Law which manifests itself in Nature." 23 Virtue 
is its own end, the supreme good of men ; it in itself is sufficient 
for happiness. There must be immanent in man as part of 
Nature that which can identify itself with the general law of all. 
" Light is apprehended by the luminous eye, sound by the aeri- 
form ear, and the nature of the All by the related logos in us." 24 
This Universal Nature is the creative cosmic power, which 
permeates the world as an all-pervading breath, — as the soul 
and reason of the All, — and contains the rational germs of all 
things. The World Thought is acting according to ends. Man's 
morality consists in subordination to this law, to eternal neces- 
sity. To act according to the " Law of Nature " meant with 
them the opposite of what it meant in later times. Passion was 
a term with them that included all the cravings of sense, the 
appetites and desires. He who did not wait for the affirmation, 

22 Windelband, History of Philosophy. 

23 Stockl, I. Page 140. 

24 Posidonius. Quoted in Ueberweg Ancient and Mediaeval Philosophy. 
Page 192. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 37 

or apprehension, the voice of reason, but acted in accord with 
passion, was acting contrary to Nature, which is most nearly 
defined as Reason. Emotion is an accompaniment of failure to 
act according to Nature ; Emotionlessness is the goal. " If man 
cannot hinder fate from preparing for him pleasure and pain, 
he may nevertheless by esteeming the former as not a good, and 
the latter as not an evil, keep the proud consciousness of his 
self-sufficiency." 25 

The possession of reason prevents him from being the play- 
thing of circumstance. This withdrawal of the individual per- 
sonality within itself, this discriminaton of the moral from the 
agreeable, is an essential characteristic of the Stoic ideal. Not 
altogether paradoxical is this part of the Stoic ideal, and the 
part that regards man as under obligation to lead a social life. 
"As parts of the same one .World-reason, gods and men together 
form one great rational living structure, every individual a neces- 
sary member." A realm of reason embracing all its members is 
an ideal goal. This modification of Greek philosophy was largely 
the product of their effort to adapt it to the many. To translate 
into conduct the Socratic ideal of virtue, was the main problem 
for the Stoics. The philosophic formulation became a valued 
possession of the iron statesmen of republican Rome. " Duty, 
the feeling of responsibility, strict consciousness of the ought, 
recognition of a higher order, gives to their doctrine as to their 
life, backbone and marrow." 26 

The recognition of no mean between Virtue and Vice by the 
earlier Stoics changed in later times to the consideration of 
gradation of goods and to the correlative gradation of duties. 
Improvement is substituted for the absolute opposition between 
Virtue and Vice. 

This school of Stoics formulated probably the best expression 
of the tendency of the time to the practical wisdom of life though 
" with all the clearness and impressiveness of one-sidedness." 27 
The fundamental tendency was individual ethics : the right appre- 
ciation of the good things of life was its essential object. A sort 
of social-ethical principle pervaded the times. 28 The logic and 



26 Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page i68ff. 
"Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page 172. 

27 Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page 159. 

28 Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page 159. 



38 The Concept Standard 

ethics of Stoicism contain much that enters into the logical and 
ethical discussions of the present. The social-ethical principle, 
the brotherhood of man, is taught to-day again from the phil- 
osophical standpoint. The Nominalism of the Stoic logic has a 
curiously familiar aspect, with its emphasis on the reality of the 
particular ; its criterion of truth is the affirmation of the object 
in the critical judgment ; its idea of the concept as mere gen- 
eralized sensuous perceptions. The moral sayings of Epictetus, 
Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius are too well known to mention as 
adding to the feeling of being at home with many of the Stoic 
doctrines. If one could add to the Stoic conception the critical 
control of the perceptive judgment secured by modern science, 
the logic would warrant the substitution of modern individualistic 
control of facts for the self-sufficiency idea of the Stoic. The 
modern idea might be interpreted as control by the self, rather 
than control of the self. 

To sum up the Stoic contribution in relation to the standard ; 
it is they, probably, more than any other merely philosophic 
school of thought that elevated an ideal (their conception of the 
Law of Nature) as a standard above the will of legislators, 
whether despotic or popular. The self-containment, or self- 
reliance of the Stoic, and his universalism are correlative to a 
high degree. The wise man learned to contain himself and to 
bow to the universal order of things, " as the disposer of things 
has disposed them." " Reasoning on such lines as these, from 
their conception of Nature as one Cosmos, animated by One 
God, the father of all mankind, the Stoics arrived at the idea of 
a Law of Nature prescribing the freedom, equality, and brother- 
hood of mankind, overriding all distinctions of class, and race, 
and nation, prescribing good faith and mutual obligation, even 
when there was no law." 2Q This was an active principle and 
may be said to determine the policy that Rome pursued with her 
colonies. The catholic and humane principles of Stoicism made 
possible that recognition of the right of the conquered to achieve 
their development along their own lines. The Common law seems 
a manifestation of the same catholicity of conception : that sift- 
ing of the cosmopolitan elements of control from the various 
conquered peoples. It must be to the lasting fame of Stoicism 



29 Hobhouse, II, 204. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 39 

that it can claim the following conception of one of the best 
Emperors : that government " should provide a constitution of 
equal laws ordered in accordance with equality and equal freedom 
of speech, and a Kingship honoring above all things the freedom 
of those who are ruled." That this ideal was not reached, does 
not invalidate the fact that there must be much in a philosophy 
that produced such standards. There is a value, say what you 
will, of the " high which proved too high, the heroic for earth 
too hard." Even the extreme, where man's hypocrisy disregarded 
what it was expedient not to deny, revolting though this must 
be, was a hint of better things. 

Hobhouse sums up the contributions of Greek philosophy in- 
cluding its later Graeco-Roman development as the following : 
( 1 ) Moral obligation was founded on the well-being of the indi- 
vidual : virtue was not an emptying but a fulfilment of the 
personality : it reconciled self-realization or development with 
the demands of citizenship in a free city and state; and (2) from 
the Stoics it conceived an ideal standard of conduct applicable 
to all mankind, not subordinate but superior to state law, an 
ideal to which social as well as individual custom should be 
made to conform. 

It is evident that these were contributions, because of their 
subsumption in Christianity and because also we can trace the 
idea of " a Law of Nature from the ' common reason ' of 
Heraclitus and the ' natural justice ' of Aristotle, through the 
Roman Jurisprudence and the Canon Law to Grotius and Hobbes 
and from them to Locke and Rousseau." 30 It is true without 
doubt that Greek ethical ideas and standards have been very 
recently revived as correctives of real or fancied failures in mod- 
ern ideals. 

The Contributions of Pagan Philosophy to the Christian Ideal 
,With these contributions from Greek philosophy subsumed in 
Christian theology, there was much that was essentially religious. 
The abiding essence of things, the whole system of Plato's 
reality, was a spiritual conception seen most strongly as a re- 
ligious one, in the Timaeus. The spiritual monotheism of Aris- 
totle was but a development and transmission of the Platonic 
idealism. There was much in the Stoic conception of the pneuma 
30 Hobhouse, II, 207. 



40 The Concept Standard 

and the logos, much in the recognition of a command transcend- 
ing human desire, that was a fertile substratum for Christian 
doctrine. So completely had the profound thought of Greek 
philosophy imbedded itself in the civilization of the time, that 
permanent satisfaction meant satisfaction of feelings and intel- 
lect. The " afterglow " of custom-standards that furnished the 
opposite pole to Greek thought and made its activity possible, 
had been so transmuted by the marvelous alchemy of the Pla- 
tonic and Aristotelian systems, that man's mental existence hence- 
forth demanded the rational as a necessary mode of its activity. 
Hence the marvelous development of religious metaphysics that 
the early Christian era afforded. In Alexandria, the resort of 
Jewish savant and Greek philosopher, developed the Graeco-Ori- 
ental philosophy, which was essentially a philosophy of religion. 
" It made use of philosophical concepts and principles only for 
the purpose of giving philosophic form and establishing by phil- 
osophic proof, what it rightly or wrongly regarded as primeval 
religious tradition." 31 

This religion had a practical as well as theoretic aim. Cor- 
ruption of the grossest kind had undermined the religious and 
moral life of society. Faith in the old religions was fast dis- 
appearing, religious doctrines and ritual were objects of mock- 
ery, and frivolity and vice prevailed. 32 The efforts of religious 
philosophers were exerted in gathering the elements of truth 
found in conflicting philosophies, into a comprehensive system. 
To make this system life-giving to the decadent civilization, the 
strain of mysticism formed a considerable part. " To reform 
religion, man it was believed should be again brought into close 
communion with God." Mystical asceticism is but a logical 
emergence of the union of Greek and Oriental philosophy. The 
Platonic and Aristotelian attitude toward the economic world, 
the Stoic independence of wants are easily tributary to asceticism. 
Again in Plato's absorption in the absolute, and in Aristotle's 
picture of complete happiness in contemplation we have the 
essence of mysticism. Mystical asceticism could well have been 
evolved from the Greek alone, but when brought into contact 
with the mysticism of the East, in an age where many revelled 



31 Stockl, (Translated by Finlay). History of Ancient Philosophy 
Part I, page 160. 

32 Ibid. 



Review, of Conception of the Standard 41 

in surfeit in the midst of millions deprived of sufficiency, it is 
easily seen that such a doctrine would flourish, finding eventually 
its best expression in Philo whose life extended over the last 
part of the first century B. C. and the first part of the first 
century A. D. The combination of Greek philosophy with 
Jewish theology was in operation from the second century B. C. 
In the last named of the three Jewish sects formed in that cen- 
tury, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Theraputae, 33 are 
found the first beginnings of Graeco-Jewish Philosophy. 

A consideration of the evolution of the Christian standard 
requires an insight into Philo's idea of the Logos. 

The world is the work of God, but the world is not God. The 
world came mediately from God : it was not fitting that He, the 
supremely Pure, should come in immediate contact with matter. 
He created it by His Logos (Word). 34 The sum-total of divine 
activity in the world is 35 designated by the Stoic conception of 
the Logos — Reason as coming forth from the Deity ("uttered 
Reason"). It might be in keeping here to show the influence 
of these conceptions on the promulgation of Christ's teachings 
by this text from the Gospel of St. John : " In the beginning was 
the Word: and the Word was with God: And the Word was 
God : the same that was in the beginning with God." 

" In man we distinguish between the indwelling reason, which 
is the active faculty of thought, and the extrinsic word, in which 
thoughts finds expression." An analogous distinction may be 
applied to the divine Logos, — the aggregate of all ideas indwell- 
ing in the mind of God, and the ectypes, the things created, the 
outward expression of those ideas. 

Again this Logos is the power that gives form to matter, as 
the architect of the universe, working from within outwards, — 
the universal cosmical law, the universal World-Reason which 
pervades and governs all things, which guides and controls the 
course of the universe. In this last conception of the Logos, 
we recognize the standard which in Philo's philosophy meas- 
ures, controls, governs all things. Windelband 36 sees in Philo's 
conception at once the immanence and transcendence of God : 



"Stockl. Page 163. 
"Stockl. Page 165. 
36 Windelband. Page 241. 
3 * Windelband. Page 242. 



42 The Concept Standard 

" the Logos as the God within the world is the ' dwelling place ' 
of the God without the world " — unity existing in separate 
potencies. 

With regard to human cognition Philo distinguishes between 
that which concerns itself with sensible objects, the reasoning fac- 
ulty (Logos), and the faculty of immediate intellectual contempla- 
tion ( 1701)5) . The knowledge obtained by the reasoning faculty 
is uncertain and unstable; perfect certainty is attained only by 
intellectual contemplation. " God alone can bestow the knowl- 
edge of contemplation, and He bestows it when we pray for 
it through the Logos." 37 The highest attainment is only possible 
in mystical ecstasy. It is necessary to notice that Philo recognizes 
" logical subdivisions of the universal Logos or Reason, regarded 
in its moral aspect as ' right reason.' The latter is the all- 
inclusive rule of virtuous conduct ; the Logoi are the several rules 
or laws into which it may be resolved, the divine precepts which 
must have severally their corresponding virtues." 38 

To sum up, the Logos is the Thought of God dwelling sub- 
jectively in the infinite Mind, made objective in the universe. 
" The cosmos is a tissue of rational force, which images the 
beauty, the power, the goodness of the primeval fountain." The 
reason of man is this same rational force entering into conscious- 
ness. * * * To follow it is the law of righteous living. 
Through reflection, each according to his capacity may divine the 
Logoi, particular laws, particular rules of conduct from the 
universal. 

The system of Philo covers many diverse notions, so that in 
the early Christian Era we find borrowings from Philo on opposing 
sides of the controversies. His allegorical interpretations of parts 
of Scripture had a lasting effect. His interpretation of the Fall 
of Man may be cited as an instance. It is because of the influence 
of Philo on the philosophy of the Patristic Age of Christianity 
that the above account is given. In a study of Philo, the 
impression is continually strengthened that the products of his 
eclecticism are found in many of the philosophical conceptions 
extending to modern times. In his mysticism is seen the begin- 



37 Stockl. Page 168. 

3R Drummond, Philo Judaeus or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy. 
II, Page 272. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 43 

nings of Neo-Platonism ; in his treatment of the Logos, the 
parallelism with Spinoza. 

The Mystical Asceticism of Plotinus 
Plotinus conceives the highest good to consist in mystical 
asceticism, which as we have seen can only be attained by with- 
drawal of the soul from the things of sense. The source of 
evil is the body, because it is composed of matter. The soul is 
individualized in its union with the body. The essence of evil 
is the assertion of this individuality of the soul, against the uni- 
versal existence with which it has its being. The essence of 
good is in the merging of the soul in the universal. All practice 
is for the sake of theory, and " the wise man is blessed in his- 
self-proficiency even if no one should see his blessedness. 39 

The system of Plotinus is an intricate one — a theory of ema- 
nation as distinguished from evolution. This system of emana- 
tion is characteristic of the whole school of Neo-Platonism. This 
doctrine shows the Christian attitude in rejecting all " compro- 
mise with sensual self-seeking, and has faith in a reality deeper 
than phenomenal nature, deeper than civic or natural relations, 
deeper even than mind." Like Plato's Idea of the Good, it is 
above existence ; like Aristotle's Unity or Primal God, it is above 
reason, and above the life of the world. The last two principles 
Bosanquet identifies with Aristotle's " intelligence," and with the 
Stoic " universal life." These emanate from the Divine mind, 
and hence are inferior to it. This " adherence to the axiom 
of subordination, that the derived is below the original, dis- 
tinguishes Neo-Platonism from a true evolutionary doctrine, 
such as was latent though not at all obvious in Christianity." 40 In 
connection with Plotinus' conception of the highest principle it 
is consistent to mention his theory of the Beautiful. Beauty 
to him was a direct expression of reason in sense : " All that 
symbolizes in sensuous or material form the laws or reasons 
eternally active in the world has a right to rank as beautiful.'' 
He regarded the prevalent idea that symmetry is a necessary 
category of the beautiful as inadequate. He emphasized the 
importance of light. The portrait painter must aim to catch 
the look of the eye as the mind reveals itself in it more than 

i 39 Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic, P. 112ft. 
40 Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic, P. 112. 



44 The Concept Standard 

in the conformation of the body. " A beautiful material thing 
is produced by participation in reason issuing from the Divine." 41 
The conception of art as perfection of cunning in imitation is 
changed to one of symbolism. Material beauty is an image ema- 
nating from reason, in which the soul recognizes an affinity to 
itself in participation in reason and form. The theory excludes 
all desire for the sensuous reality, and in being a direct expres- 
sion of reason in sense, is co-ordinate with morality, not subordi- 
nate as in previous theories. 

Influence of Philo and Plotinus on Early Christian Philosophy 

As has been stated, Philo's complex and varied conceptions 
concerning the Divine Logos became tributary to the contro- 
versies concerning Christ's doctrines in the first and second cen- 
turies. The outcome of the controversies was Christian philos- 
ophy. Philo's methods, being those of synthesis of two philoso- 
phies, lent themselves to the highly synthetic philosophy of early 
Christianity. The Gnostics, on the one hand, reject Judaism, 
and on the other, use Philo's method of assuming esoteric teach- 
ing, as the authority underlying their philosophy. The Apolo- 
gists accept much of the doctrine of Philo as part of the founda- 
tion of the philosophy of the Logos, as well as some of his theories 
of revelation. 

The Neo-Platonists continued the Hellenic philosophy, endeav- 
oring to oppose Greek theology to the Christian. Though failing 
in this purpose, Hellenic philosophy became one of the chief 
means of transmitting the doctrines of Christ. The mystic con- 
ception based on Plato's and Aristotle's doctrine of contempla- 
tion as the highest end, intensified as it was by influences from 
the East, and best conceived as an immediate illumination of 
the individual, by the Deity, found its expression in the idea of 
Divine Grace and in the ecstasy of prayer. This influence showed 
itself also in strengthening the conception of Jewish prophetic 
revelation, inasmuch as the abandonment of all activity in the 
ecstasy, makes man a direct instrument of revelation, an inspired 
prophet of divine wisdom. The development of the idea that 
church doctrine is a fulfilment of prophecy gave rise eventually 
to its highest manifestation in the scholasticism of the Middle 



41 Bosanquet. P. 114. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 45 

Ages, while the development of the Neo-Platonic idea of immer- 
sion in the Divine essence found full expression in the mysticism 
of the same period. 

The Christian doctrine of free will finds an incipient revela- 
tion in Aristotle's idea of capacity in the individual to choose 
between given possibilities. This conception substituted for the 
dualism between good and evil the purely internal one of conflict 
between the Finite and Infinite Will. 

In the resultant Christian Philosophy there is an historical 
teleology added through the well-ordered succession of God's acts 
of revelation to the Greek idea of nature's teleology. Nature 
exists for man ; history exists for man. The history of the sal- 
vation of the human race is the measure of all Unite things. 
Man's realization of his relation to the Infinite is the end and 
aim of creation. "AVhat arises and passes away in space and 
time has its true significance only in so far as it is taken up into 
the relation of man to his God." 42 Being and becoming, beauty, 
goodness, truth unite with love and faith as Man's conception 
of means of realizing the end of his existence. Experiences of 
personalities, controlled by the principle of love, and by faith in 
the solidarity of the whole, become the essence of world-move- 
ments. Not alone Philo and Plotinus, but Heraclitus, Pythagoras, 
Zeno, Aristotle, and Plato were potent influences in the forma- 
tion of the philosophy of the Patristic Age. 

The Christian Doctrine of the Logos 
The central doctrine of the Christian philosophy was inevitably 
the doctrine of the Divine Logos incarnate. Philo who wrote 
under the influence of the revelation in the Old Testament made 
the Logos a kind of personality — extraneous to the Godhead. 43 
Christian doctrine asserted the personality of the Logos, the Son 
of God, identical in nature with the Father from all eternity, 
become incarnate to bring mankind from darkness into light, 
from death to salvation. For the first time in human history 
did the active principle of the brotherhood of man become a 
spring of life to humanity. The Divine came within the compre- 
hension of all men. The Incarnate God had lived, and suffered 
as men live and suffer. Such a God was real, and what had 



42 Windelband, History of Philosophy, P. 262. 

43 Stockl. P. 194. 



46 The Concept Standard 

been a philosophic ideal for the few, became an active principle 
within all life. This conception of God as spiritual personality 
was one of tremendous energy. Persons and personal relations 
were all of Reality. The world had never witnessed the power, 
or strength of so compelling an idea. The Divine Sonship of 
Man was a personal relation — a living, breathing relationship 
as children of God, because Christ was man. 44 

The Christian teachers were so deeply imbued with the spirit 
of Christianity that its expression assumed diverse forms whose 
unifying force was the tremendous energy of the faith with a 
love whose essence was communication. The triumphant spread 
of the Gospel, its purifying effect, and the conspicuous purity 
of life in the Christian communities in the midst of general cor- 
ruption were the strongest arguments in favor of Christianity. 

But from zeal and necessity both, these earnest teachers called 
to their aid philosophy. The first of the Apologists was Justin, 
trained in the various philosophical schools : a Stoic, a Peri- 
patetic, a Pythagorean, a Platonist, successively, then a Christian. 
It is nothing extraordinary that Justin culled from these philo- 
sophies the elements most conducive to the furtherance of Christi- 
anity. In the Christian system, he claims, the Divine Logos has 
manifested Himself in the flesh and therefore in Christianity is 
the fulness of truth. " But even in pre-Christian times, the Logos 
was not wholly unrevealed. He was revealed as the omnipresent 
in works of creation as well as in human reason, which is reason 
only in so far as it participates in the Divine Logos. This Logos 
enabled the philosophers and poets of antiquity to attain knowl- 
edge of the truth. Whatever truth they possessed and set forth 
in their writings they owed to the Logos. The measure of their 
knowledge was determined by their participation in the Logos; 
hence their knowledge of truth was only partial and they were 
frequently involved in self-contradictions. The fulness of truth 
was revealed only in the Incarnate Logos." 45 By this concep- 
tion, the " truth taught by the philosophers and poets of paganism 
is essentially Christian." It follows also that those who before 
the Incarnation lived according to reason, i. e., " according to 
the Law of the Logos which manifests itself in reason, were 
Christians, even though they were esteemed atheists by their con- 



Windelband. 
Stockl. P. 215. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 47 

temporaries. Such were Socrates, Heraclitus and others among 
the Greeks, and Abraham, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, Elias and 
others among outer nations. 46 These were, however, the privi- 
leged few : the knowledge of God and of His law was first made 
general by the Incarnate Logos. 

Justin daimed that the Greeks had knowledge of the law of 
Moses. " The doctrine of free will, Plato borrowed from Moses, 
and he was furthermore acquainted with the whole of the Old 
Testament. Moreover, all that the philosophers and poets have 
taught regarding the immortality of the soul, punishment after 
death, the contemplation of things divine and kindred subjects, 
was derived in the first instance from the Jewish prophets; from 
this one source the seeds of truth have been sent forth in all 
directions, though at times being wrongly apprehended by men, 
they have given rise to differences of opinion." 47 

Justin accounts (as do all the orthodox Apologists) for evil 
as the result of man's deliberate action. Free will is man's pre- 
rogative. 

The Christian Apologists 48 unite the Aristotelian conception 
of God as pure intellect or spirit with the doctrine that God cre- 
ated the world out of shapeless matter. Matter is not an inde- 
pendent principle as the Gnostics suppose in their dualistic notion 
of God and Matter, hence it is not bad in itself, but good or evil 
as man's purposiveness directs. This conception voices itself in 
meeting the problem of understanding the world as the product 
of spirit. It is a spiritual monism. 

Irenaeus strengthens Justin's philosophy ( 1 ) in his maintenance 
of the eternality of the Logos : (2) in his conception of revelation ; 
that God revealed himself on constantly higher levels according 
to man's ability and need, — to the entire race in rationality, to 
the people of Israel in the law of Moses, and to all mankind in 
the law of love and freedom through Jesus, (3) and in his recog- 
nition of the source of evil as man's deliberate opposition to Divine 
will by the surrender to sensual appetites. 

Clement of Alexandria about the middle of the second century 
ascribed a sum of truth to Greek Philosophy as a revelation 
through reason. Plato was to him the most excellent of philoso- 

46 Stockl. P. 215. 

47 Apol. I. 44. Quoted in Stockl. P. 215. 

48 Stockl. P. 222. 



48 The Concept Standard 

phers. So completely did Clement urge the study of philosophy 
that he regarded the Christian Gnostic in comparison with him 
who believes without deeper knowledge, as man compared with 
child. 49 " Philosophy is essentially a gift of the Divine Logos ; 
the character of a means to the attainment of the Christian 
Gnosis can and must be accorded to it ; in a right view of Chris- 
tianity it cannot be set aside." But there is a practical require- 
ment also. The man who passes from Faith to Gnosis must 
overcome desire and appetite and be upon the path of moral 
improvement. The complete mastery of inclination is the chief 
characteristic of the Christian Gnostic as in the Stoic Ideal. The 
following is the description given of the Christian Gnostic, the 
ideal in Clement's philosophy : The Gnostic is united in perfect 
and immediate love with Infinite Beauty, and beyond this he 
desires nothing. He does not do good from any fear of punish- 
ment, nor for any hope of reward, but merely for God's sake 
and for the sake of the good done. Even if assured that he 
would not be punished for evil deeds, he would not perform such 
actions, and this for the sole reason that they are against right 
reason, that they are evil. He is not mastered by any inclination 
or appetite ; only those appetites are admitted in his nature which 
are indispensable for the support of bodily life, and they are 
satisfied only as far as the support of life requires. Affections 
and passions do not disturb his lofty calm of mind ; to such influ- 
ences he is inaccessible. The entire absence from passion of the 
Gnostic raises him to a certain divine condition for in it he 
attains to likeness with God. In this state his works are wholly 
perfect, for they are performed purely for righteousness' sake. 50 

This state is obtained by the chosen few only, but serves as 
an ideal for all — something to be emulated. Interesting is the 
account of the Christian boy, Origen. His own education and 
afterwards his theories of education while instructor, are full of 
interest, even now. Gregory's devotion as a pupil has furnished 
an account of his principles of education. The character of a 
pupil was his special study. He believed in intellectual disci- 
pline in the accurate preparation of the instruments of thought. 
Language was to be carefully used as the means of expressing 
truths with the nicest accuracy. A study of external Nature was 



49 Stockl. P. 23: 
50 Stockl. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 49 

destined in the end to show man in his just relation to the world. 51 
"A rational feeling for the vast grandeur of the external order, 
' the sacred economy of the universe,' was a preparation for moral 
science." Here ethics was life, not a theory. All study was 
tributary to character. Gregory says: "There was no subject 
forbidden to us ; nothing hidden or inaccessible. We were allowed 
to become acquainted with every doctrine, barbarian or Greek, 
on things spiritual or evil, divine or human, traversing with all 
freedom, and investigating the whole circuit of knowledge, and 
satisfying ourselves with the full enjoyment of all the pleasures 
of the soul." 52 

The method of Origen as Gregory describes it, is determined 
by an underlying principle of human nature — a God-implanted 
striving to know the purpose of creation, as revealed in the 
ordered creation about us. " This desire, this passion, has without 
doubt been implanted in us by God. And as the eye seeks the 
light, as our body craves food, so our mind is impressed with the 
characteristic and natural desire of knowing the truth of God 
and the causes of what we observe." 53 This gift in its nature 
anticipates satisfaction. " To every one that hath shall be given," 
given, Origen would say, in measure to the use of this desire for 
Truth. Each soul draws and takes to itself the Word of God 
in proportion to its capacity and faith." 54 " The creation of 
finite rational beings by the free act of God involved the creation 
of a medium through which they could give expression to their 
character." 55 It is the spirit that moulds the frame through 
which it is manifested. Everything in life becomes worth while, 
as a means of realizing the end of human life. 

The end of life is with Origen the progressive assimilation of 
man to God by the voluntary appropriation of his gifts. Pagan 
philosophers had conceived the idea of assimilation, but Origen 
vitalized the idea by the living energy of faith. " By the unceas- 
ing action of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit toward us, renewed 
at every stage of our advance, we shall be able with difficulty 
at some future time to look on the holy and blessed life." Be 



61 Paneg. C. 8. 

62 Ibid. C. 15. 

63 Be Principiis, II, 4. 

64 In Cant. I to III. 

55 Westcott, Origen and the Beginnings of Christian Philosophy, P. 238. 
58 Westcott, Religious Thought in the West, P. 227. 



50 The Concept Standard 

Many seeming incongruities in the world's plan could be recon- 
ciled, did man have but breadth of vision. The entire range of 
being is " one thought " while " we that are not all, as parts can 
see but parts, now this, now that." 57 

Man's participation is necessary to the fulfilment of the end. 
" Neither does our own power apart from the knowledge of God, 
compel us to make progress ; nor does the knowledge of God do 
so unless we ourselves also contribute something to the good 
result." 58 

Unceasingly man's participation is adding to the sum of moral 
forces in the world, contributing as a free agent through loving 
abandonment to God's plan, his measure to the progress of all. 
" God cares not only for the whole, but beyond the whole in an 
especial manner for each rational being." 59 Every gift of God 
is perfect ; God's gift to his rational creatures was not virtue 
but the capacity for virtue. 

" Right action is not only a necessity for moulding of the 
character after the Divine likeness; it is also a necessity for the 
progressive reception of the Divine Revelation. Morality in the 
largest sense of the word is bound to Theology as a condition of 
knowledge." 60 

Much of Origen's idealization of the world of sense was taken 
up by the school of philosophers following him, best of all prob- 
ably by Gregory of Nyassa. This seems the idea most frequently 
associated with Origen's system of Christian doctrine: that the 
whole world is a manifestation of the goodness and righteousness 
of God in every detail. This conception necessarily idealizes 
the world of sense, as a continuous law-revealing means of man's 
development. 

With Origen the Logos as the sum-total of the world-thoughts 
of God is constantly revealing Himself to man in proportion as 
man is active in seeking. " The Logos is the hypostatical Wis- 
dom of God, and is by the fact the Archetype of all thing's. 
Through the Logos, which in archetypal fashion contains all things 
in Himself, are all things created. By this power the universe 
exists. He penetrates and permeates the entire creation, giving, 

67 De Prin. 115:9. 5. 

t8 DePrin. III. 1,22. 

69 C. Celsus. IV. 99. 

80 Westcott. P. 242. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 51 

being, and maintaining everything. He is the comprehensive force 
which embraces and upholds all things. He is the soul of the 
universe. To Him is every Revelation due. He is the source 
of reason in man ; all knowledge of Truth is in the last analysis 
attributable to Him." 61 

Augustine, " a mind of the first order," has been considered 
as one of the founders of modern thought. 62 For that reason 
he is placed at the beginning of the Mediaeval Philosophy by 
Windelband and Erdmann in their Histories of Philosophy. Others, 
Ueberweg, Stockl, place him at the close of the Patristic period. 
" Inasmuch as convictions of the philosophers of the early Chris- 
tian Era are presented in the form of a systematized philosophy," 
Augustine's philosophy of the Christian Church belongs as sum- 
mary to the early order or so-called Patristic period. Inasmuch 
as it served as the medium through which European people 
inherited Greek learning, it might be considered as initiating the 
Mediaeval period during which Europe was at school. Augus- 
tine's psychology entitles him to the place given him as one of 
the founders of modern thought. His conception of the highest 
goal of life is that of Plato and Aristotle. 

His devotion to philosophy and his exaltation of it in his 
theory of knowledge ally him to the ancient world. His recog- 
nition of the human soul as a unity, as the living whole of per- 
sonality which, by its self-consciousness, is certain of its own 
reality as the surest truth, places him above Aristotle, and the 
Neo-Platonists. 63 This immediate certainty of inner experience 
(which Augustine first expressed 6i with complete clearness) 
is the principle upon which all his philosophy rests. In interior e 
homine habit as Veritas 65 is the conception that unifies the com- 
ponent ideas of his system, and at the same time animates their 
expression. For the skeptic who doubted the external reality of 
the content of perceptions, he argues that he at least cannot doubt 
the existence of the sensation. 

His initial premise, Ego dubito, ergo sum, contains the solid 
ground upon which he builds his psychology. This brings him 
through Descartes to present-day philosophy. This existence, 



61 Stockl. P. 237. 

62 Windelband. P. 276. 
fl3 Windelband. P. 278. 
64 Windelband. P. 276. 

BB Augustine, De Vera Religione, 39-72. 



52 The Concept Standard 

this power of doubting the evidences of our senses, Augustine 
argues could not have been given to us without criteria or stan- 
dards of truths to measure and examine these perceptions. For* 
this the reason exists — this immediate perception of incorporeal 
truths. " Under these Augustine understands, not only the logi- 
cal laws, but the norms of the good and beautiful : in general 
all those truths not to be attained by sensation, which are neces- 
sary to elaborate and judge what is given — the principles of 
judging. Such norms of reason assert themselves as standards 
of judgment in doubt as in all activities of consciousness * * * 
they are the same for all who think rationally * * * Thus 
the individual consciousness sees itself attached in its own func- 
tion to something universally valid and far reaching. 66 

When we reflect upon ourselves, we find in ourselves not only 
sensations, but also an internal sense which makes of the former 
its objects (for we have knowledge of our sensations, but the 
external senses are unable to perceive their own sensations), and 
finally reason which knows both the internal sense and itself. 
(De Lib, Arb. II, 3 seq.) That which judges is always superior 
to that which is judged; but that according to which judgment 
is rendered, is also superior to that zvhich judges. The human 
reason perceives that there is something higher than itself, for 
it is changeable, now knowing, now not knowing, now seeking 
after knowledge, now not, now correctly, now incorrectly, judging: 
but truth itself which is the norm according to zvhich it judges 
must be unchangeable. {De Lib., Arb. II, 6. De Vera Rel, 
54, 57. De Civ. Dei., VIII, 6.) If thou findest thy nature to 
be changeable, rise above thyself to the Eternal source of the 
light of reason. Even if thou only knowest that thou doubtest, 
thou knowest what is true, but nothing is true unless truth 
exists. (De Vera Rel, 72 seq.) Now the unchanging truth is 
q oc j * * * jj- [ s identical with the highest good in virtue 
of which all inferior goods are good. (De Trin., VIII, 4.) All 
ideas are in God. He is the eternal ground of all form who 
imparted to created objects their temporal forms ; he is the abso- 
lute unity to which all that is finite aspires without ever fully 
reaching it, the highest beauty which is superior to and the con- 
dition of all other beauty; he is absolute wisdom, blessedness, 



68 De Ver. Rel. 39-72 f. — Also Windelband. P. 278. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 53 

justice, the moral law. * * * God is, as was rightly per- 
ceived and acknowledged by the Platonists, the principle of being 
and knowledge and the guiding-star of life. {Confess, VII, 16. 
De Civ. Dei., VIII, 4.)" 

" If a human teacher states any principle to us, we do not 
immediately perceive the truth of the principle. We must have 
within ourselves a criterion by zuhich we test the truth of the 
proposition stated. And this criterion can, for the reason already 
given, be no other than absolute truth itself. The immutable, 
eternal Word of God is the teacher of the soul." 68 The knowl- 
edge of the intelligible world is for Augustine, essentially, illumi- 
nation, revelation. 69 The soul will become wise only by partici- 
pation in the unchangeable wisdom itself, with which it is not 
identical. This participation in Divine Intelligence is through 
Divine grace and is granted to man in measure of his moral con- 
dition. The whole metaphysical system of Augustine is built up 
from man's knowledge of himself — upon his self-consciousness. 
As none of the categories are attributable to God, and man's 
knowledge of God is altogether beyond definition, the only com- 
prehension of the Divine essence possible to man is after the 
analogy of human self-knowledge. This may be justified by con- 
sidering man to be created in the image of God. The " permanent 
existence of spiritual Being is given in the sum-total of the con- 
tent of consciousness, or reproducible ideas ; its movement and 
living activity consists in the processes of uniting and separating 
these elements in judgments ; and the impelling force is the Will, 
directed toward the attainment of highest blessedness." 70 Idea, 
judgment, and will are modes of functioning whose unity is the 
soul. The central position of the will in the inner life is manifest 
in assuming all perception to be essentially an act of the will, all 
activity of the inner sense, as well, and finally the activity of the 
intellect is formed, completed according to the purposes of the 
will, " for the will must determine the direction and the end 
according to which the data of outer or inner experience are 
to be brought under the general truths of rational insight." 71 



67 Ouoted in Erdmann. P. 

68 Stockl. P. 269. 

69 Windelband. P. 281. 

70 Windelband. P. 280. 

71 Windelband. P. 281 ff. 



54 The Concept Standard 

It is in the cognitions of rational insight that man's abandon- 
ment to the will of the Divinity secures the illumination and 
revelation that brings that participation in the Divine intelligence 
which constitutes truth. Faith then in the Divine Revelation 
must precede the knowledge which " appropriates and compre- 
hends it intellectually. Full rational insight is indeed first in 
dignity, but faith in revelation is the first in time." 

" As man has a rational soul, he subordinates all this which he 
has in common with the beasts to the peace of his rational soul, 
that his intellect may have free play and may regulate his actions, 
and that he may thus enjoy the well-ordered harmony of knowl- 
edge and action which constitutes, as we have said, the peace 
of the rational soul. And for this purpose he must desire to be 
neither molested by pain, nor disturbed by desire, nor extinguished 
by death, that he may arrive at some useful knowledge by which 
he may regulate his life and manners. But owing to the liability 
of the human mind to fall into mistakes this very pursuit of 
knowledge may be a snare to him unless he has a Divine Master, 
who may at the same time give him such help as to preserve 
his own freedom. Because while so long as he is in this mortal 
body, he is a stranger to God, he walks by faith, not by sight; 
and he therefore refers all peace, bodily or spiritual or both, to 
that peace which mortal man has with the immortal God, so that 
he exhibits the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law." 72 

With Augustine, the development of Christian philosophy in 
the West came for a time to an end. The barbarian invasions 
brought about so complete an overthrow of existing social con- 
ditions that time and energy were focused upon the establishment 
of the new order. The Christian philosophers retired to the mon- 
asteries where they labored long and tirelessly to collect, preserve, 
and transmit what portions of intellectual treasure they could 
rescue. Claudianus, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore, and Vene- 
rable Bede were among those who handed down the inheritance 
of learning and prepared the way for the Middle Ages. 



72 City of God II, Book XIX. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 55 

Section II 
Mediaeval Period 

The first of the Mediaeval period was devoted to the schooling 
in formal logic. The immediate stimulus was the interpretation 
in the translation of Boethius. 73 

The Augustinian doctrine was that individual objects were 
substances in the fullest sense, while species and genera were 
such only in a secondary degree, and generic and specific char- 
acteristics were predicable of individual substances. The reality 
of universals was questioned by the assertion of the last fact. 
It was inconceivable to predicate a thing of another thing. Scotus 
Erigena combated this by asserting that the truth, and therefore 
all being, is to be sought in the universal. This essential reality 
in a process of unfolding creates natures or beings with creative 
power in themselves. These include the sum-total of prototypes, 
ideas, eternal archetypes of things. These ideas are contained in 
the Divine Wisdom or Divine Word. Creation is an act of God 
by which he passes through the primordial causes or principia 
into the world of invisible and visible creatures. 74 This proces- 
sion is an eternal activity. Scotus says expressly that he affirms 
the descent into finite things not only with reference to the incar- 
nation, but with reference to all created things or existences. 
Our life is God's life in us. 75 Universalia ante rem, also Uni- 
versalia in re, are the basic principles of this doctrine. This 
doctrine is closely allied to that of Plotinus and was regarded 
by the opposing school as logical pantheism. " God and the 
world are one. The same ' Nature ' is as creative unity, God, 
and as created plurality, the world." According to this theory, 
the more universality the more reality. It is a continuation of 
the thought of the Greeks, and involved, as that did, the idea of 
worth or value. Perfection was inseparably fused with the con- 



Note- — Porphyry's Introduction to the categories of Aristotle, " de 
generibus et speciebus — sive subsistant sive in solis nudis intellectihus 
posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia an incorporalia, et utrum sepa- 
rata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia." 

73 ;Windelband. P. 288. 
u De Div.Nat. III. 25. 

™De Divis. Nat. I. 78 (De ipsam sancta trinitas in nobis et in se. 
ipsa amat. vidit, movet.) 



56 The Concept Standard 

cept of Being. 76 From these conceptions in Realism the degree 
of universality is the standard. 

The Nominalists opposed to this theory of universals, one of 
the reality of particulars: only individuals have real existence; 
genera and species are merely subjective combinations of simi- 
lar elements united by the aid of one and the same concept. Be- 
cause universals in their logical significance are predicates, they 
cannot be substances. Extreme Nominalism considered the uni- 
versal to be the comprehension of many particulars by one name. 
This name is the concept, is the universal that serves as a sign 
for a multiplicity of substances or their accidents. Universalia 
post rem is the basis of extreme Nominalism. 

Modifications of these extreme views occurred in the so-called 
Indifferentism, a development from Realism, and the doctrine 
of Abelard, a development from Nominalism. In the former, the 
stages of universality, with their corresponding worths, were 
given up, and the idea of real states of one and the same sub- 
stratum was adopted. There is a close approach to the " identity 
— in — difference " conception in that the genus is present in the 
species, the species in its individual examples, indiffentio (not 
different). Abelard teaches that universals can be neither things 
nor words. The universal is the conceptual predicate, the con- 
cept itself, emerging in consciousness, — in judgment. But be- 
cause of the uniqueness of its existence as predicate, it is not 
without relations to absolute reality. 77 There must be something 
in the nature of things that we apprehend and predicate in these 
universals, which something is the likeness or similarity of the 
essential characteristics of individual substances. " Not as 
numerical or substantial identity but as a multiplicity with like 
qualities, does the universal exist in Nature, and it becomes a 
unitary concept which makes predication possible, only when it 
has been apprehended and conceived by human thought." This 
similarity Abelard traces to the archetypes in the Divine Mind 
(noys). Abelard thus unites the conflicting theories by con- 
ceiving universalia ante rem as conceptus mentis in God; uni- 
versalia in re as the similarity of the essential characteristics of 
individuals, and universalia post rem as concepts and predicates 
acquired by comparative thought. 



76 Windelband. P. 290 ff. 

77 Compare Bradley and Bosanquet. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 57 

This whole controversy about universals necessarily threw 
emphasis upon inner experiences. The Mystics were pre-emi- 
nently psychologists with marvelous power of depicting states 
and movements of feeling. They are followers of Augustine in 
examining the force of the will in these processes, in conditioning 
all knowledge in faith, and in regarding final blessedness as mys- 
tical contemplation of Divine Love. In the controversy con- 
cerning universals as functioning in thought, the keenest analysis 
of subject states was persistently pursued with an ever-increasing 
interest in the development of ideas. John of Salisbury empha- 
sized the Augustinian conception of the soul's activity as ways 
of functioning. " He sees in the sensation, and in a higher degree 
in perception or imagination, an act of judgment. Emotional 
states of hope and fear are attendant upon the union of the new 
sensational data with those that are reproduced by imagination. 
States of consciousness comprehending these feelings of pleasure 
and pain with all their diversifications in the changing states of 
life, 78 constitute the practical series. In this series the will oper- 
ates in comparing and adjusting and affirming opinions, knowl- 
edge, and rational conviction. A second series of states of con- 
sciousness is occupied by strivings for calm wisdom, — the con- 
templative knowledge of the intellect. 

In the first of these series John of Salisbury is the prototype 
of the English school of associational psychology. He concerns 
himself with practical concerns, the active world. " He has the 
practical ends of knowledge in his mind, he desires to find his 
way in the world in which man is to live, and above all in man's 
actual inner life, and brings with him into philosophy a fineness, 
and freedom of mind characteristic of the man of the world." 79 
British empiricism seems to be a state of mind resulting from 
the temperamental qualities of the ethnological elements. Here 
too we find hedonism in embryo. 

Abelard's ethics are based on his psychology. Christian con- 
sciousness of sin is the fundamental fact. Good and evil consist 
not in an outer act, but in inner motive. This places morality in 
the resolve of the will. Fault or error, the inherited predis- 
positions become sin only through the will. The norm of judg- 



78 Windelband. P. 307. 
78 Windelband. 



58 The Concept Standard 

ment, the standard, lies wholly within the individual. Agreement 
with conscience constitutes the good morally. The natural moral 
law is known in varying degree to all men. That it has been 
obscured by human sin and weakness and had been wakened from 
its torpor by the Christian religion, Abelard firmly assumes. As 
a theologian Abelard tends more and more to reduce the content 
of the moral law to the choice of the divine will. The ethics 
of intention is the recrudescence of the Augustinian principles of 
internalization and individualism of the will. The ancients, the 
early Christian philosophers, the mediaeval logicians never iso- 
lated this aspect or series of states of consciousness, as sufficient 
in itself to furnish the criterion of life. In some form, Plato, 
Aristotle, Origen, Augustine, John of Salisbury, Abelard, all 
recognize the second series where through contemplation, illumi- 
nation or enlightenment, the soul derives its sustenance, its grace, 
from the Divine. With them all, this divine principle variously 
conceived is the ultimate standard by which all values are deter- 
mined. 

Thomas Aquinas 

In Thomas Aquinas is completed an " adjustment of world- 
moving thoughts upon the largest and most imposing scale history 
has seen, and that too, without the creative authority of any 
properly new philosophical principle as its impulse toward the 
formation of a system." 80 In the light of modern inquiry and 
discussion of the nature of universals which has followed upon 
the pure delight and intoxication of scientific discovery, this 
philosophy of Aquinas has much of import. 81 



Note. — It is significant that interest in the philosophical world is once 
again concerned with logic and the old problem of the universal and par- 
ticular? The essence of scientific method is the search for law under- 
lying phenomena, a placing of an event in a continuous process of which 
it is intrinsically and functionally a part. The new order to which it is 
thus assigned as a normal part is constituted by a larger identity, where 
differences become insignificant. The scientist is thus concerned in giving 
a biography of the particular event in nature. 81 The pervasive continuous 
identity, as well as the continuous change within the process, these factors 
determine the past of the event, and at the same time forecast the future. 
Just this glimpse into scientific procedure reveals the necessity of dealing 
with the theory of knowledge that validates the tools of inquiry. The 

80 Windelband. P. 311. 

81 Dewey, Lectures in Logic. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 59 

While the delirium of scientific achievement is subsiding, the 
need of testing its findings resuscitates the controversy over uni- 
versal that characterized the Mediaeval period. What is the 
nature of general and what its logical relation to the particular. 
As a result philosophy is concerning itself with the thought of 
this epoch. 82 

In Thomas Aquinas is found a further development of Abe- 
lard's theory of the universal. Both of course have their origin 
in Aristotle. With Aristotle Thomas opposes the latter's inter- 
pretation of the Platonic theory of ideas as existing independently 
(separately), whether in things or in the divine mind. 83 If by 
ideas are understood independently existing generalities, then 
Aristotle was right in arguing against these ideas as meaningless 
fictions. But (after Augustine) " when the ideas are understood 
as thoughts immanent in the divine mind and when their action 
upon the sensible world is conceived as merely indirect," 8 * 
Thomas recognizes the theory of ideas as unobjectionable. Plato's 
conception is traced to the fact that he believed the universal 
not merely possessed a reality of some sort but that it existed in 
the same mode in our thought and in external reality. Thomas 
Aquinas (after Aristotle) shows that just as the senses are able 
to perceive separately what really is not separate (as color, or 
shape, in an apple), so the mind can effect the purely subjective 
separation by considering in the individual only the universal. 85 
This subjective abstraction in thought appertains not to our judg- 
ment of the true state of the case, but functions in the mind's 
activity of attention or apprehension. If the universal has no 

questions that will arise and will not be downed, are these : Is it some- 
thing inherent in the nature of things that determines " this biography 
of an event," or is it caprice, in the mind of the individual? Is there 
a power of the human mind by which this identity is perceived that 
brings order out of discontinuity? If this power exists, what is its 
nature ? 

82 To the investigators of today, who would throw the controversy 
over universals to the lumber pile of past theories or treat it as a long- 
outgrown children's disease, so long as they do not know how to state 
with complete certainty and clearness in what consists the metaphysical 
reality and efficiency of that which we call a law of Nature, we must 
still cry "mutato nomine de te fabula narrata". Windelband. P. 299. 

83 Uebeweg. P. 441. 

84 Ueberweg. P. 445. 

85 De Potentiis Animae, ch. 6. Quoted in Ueberweg, P. 445. 



6o The Concept Standard 

substantial existence in the objective world, it must possess 
reality of some sort, " because all science respects the universal, 
and would be illusory if the universal were without all reality ; 
the truth of knowledge depends upon the reality of the objects 
of knowledge. The universal exists in reality in the individual, 
as the one in the many, as essence of things or their quidditas; 
the intellect performs only that act of abstraction whereby the 
universal becomes in the intellect, the one beside the many." 86 
In this last it is easy to detect the modification of the Aristotelian 
by the Platonic notion. According to the Thomist theory, the 
human soul does not possess innate conceptions, but its thinking 
rests on the basis of sensuous perceptions and of representative 
images from which the active intellect abstracts forms. Uni- 
versalis in re, nniversalia post rem, et universalia ante rem, is 
the order of development of Thomist idea of the universal. 

Thomas bridges the chasm between the sensuous and the super- 
sensuous, the spiritual and material, by an acute transformation 
of the Aristotelian doctrine of Forms and their relation to mat- 
ter. 87 Pure forms are real or actual as active intelligences with- 
out any attachment to matter. Forms in the material world 
realize themselves only in union with matter. The human soul 
as lowest of the pure intelligences is a pure form {forma sepa- 
rata), and at the sarne time " as entelechy of the body, it is the 
highest of those Forms which realize themselves in matter. These 
two sides of its nature are bound together in the only unity that 
is at once subsistent and inherent. In this way the series of indi- 
vidual beings proceeds from the lowest Forms of material exis- 
tence, in past plant and animal life, through the human soul, 
with uninterrupted continuity over into the world of pure intelli- 
gences — the angels, and finally to the Absolute Form — the 
Deity." 88 Thus the Aristotelian ideas of dunamis and energeia 
gave rise in the Thomist psychology to the conception of develop- 
ment which bridged the separation between the " two worlds " 
of sense and spirit. "A body is made up of a potential subject 
called matter connaturally extended in space ; and further of an 
actuating principle of energy called substantial form, which is so 
united to the potential subject or matter, that the latter thereby 



86 Ueberweg. P. 445. 

87 Windelband. P. 324. 

88 Windelband. P. 324. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 61 

becomes an individual body within a definite species, deriving 
the power of action from the substantial form or principle of 
energy." 89 

Again in the same strain : 90 " The Divine understanding can 
comprehend whatever is proper to each in its essence. Thus 
by understanding its own essence as imitable in the way of life 
without consciousness, it gathers the form of a plant, by under- 
standing the same essence as imitable in the way of consciousness 
without intellect, the proper form of an animal, and so the rest. 
Evidently then the divine essence inasmuch as it is absolutely 
perfect may be taken as the proper type of each entity. * * * 
and herein also is defensible in some sort the opinion of Plato, 
who supposes ideas according to which all beings in the material 
world are formed. The reason why our understanding cannot 
understand many things together in one act is because in the act 
of understanding, the mind becomes one with the object under- 
stood." In this recognition of an " actuating principle of energy " 
which is referred to the divine essence there is much of Origen. 
The idea of an immanent principle as Origen conceived it is 
relieved of some of the curious accretions from the Gnostic sect, 
and is viewed in greater simplicity by Aquinas. Still further 
in similar vein is the conception carried to its implication of a 
standard. " The standard in every genus is the most perfect 
instance of the genus. But the divine truth is the standard of 
all truth. Truth is a perfection of understanding and of its act. 
The truth of our mind is measured by the object outside tHe 
mind : our understanding is called true inasmuch as it is in accord- 
ance with that object. And again the truth of the object is 
measured by its accordance with the divine mind, which is the 
cause of all things, as the truth of artificial objects is measured 
by the art of the artificer. Since through God is the first tinder- 
standing and the first object of understanding, the truth of every 
understanding must be measured by His truth, as everything is 
measured by the first and best of its kind." " The things of sense 
from which human reason takes its beginnings of knowledge, 
retain in themselves some trace of imitation of God, inasmuch 
as they are and are good." 91 



89 Aquinas. God and His Creatures. Translated by Rickaby, P. 

80 Ibid. 

91 Ibid. Book I, Chap. VIII. 



62 The Concept Standard 

The Thomist conception of development is carried over into 
the sphere of natural and revealed religion. These he regards 
as different stages of development, and sees in philosophical 
knowledge a possibility given in man's natural endowment which 
is brought to full and entire realization only by the grace active 
in revelation. 92 " There is a two-fold sort of truth in things 
divine for the wise man to study: one that can be attained by 
rational enquiry, another that transcends all the industry of rea- 
son. This truth of things divine I do not call two-fold on the 
part of God, who is one simple truth, but on the part of our 
knowledge, as our cognitive faculty has different aptitudes for 
the knowledge of divine things. To the declaration therefore of 
the first sort of truth, we must proceed by demonstrative reasons, 
that may serve to convince the adversary. But because such 
reasons are not forthcoming for truth of the second sort, our 
aim ought not to be to convince the adversary by reason, but to 
refute his reasonings against the truth, which one may hope to 
do since natural reasons cannot be contrary to the truth of 
faith." 93 Our knowledge of God must come through an under- 
standing of the effects he produces ; " and so it is brought by 
reasoning to a knowledge of him." 94 " We are brought to the 
knowledge of His existence, not by what he is in Himself, but 
by the effects which he works. * * * God is that wherein 
all things are known, not as though other things could not be 
known without his being known first, as happens in the case of 
self-evident principles, but because through his influence all 
knowledge is caused in us." The nature of the intelligent is 
therefore to grasp the intelligible. Intelligence is conversant 
with natures, which with relations are eternal. These natures 
and relations are the universals, which being such are mani- 
festations of the Prime Mover. As sight is the actuality of the 
eye, so is the soul to the body, because by the soul, called also 
the Intelligence, the body emerges from potentiality to actuality. 
Thus plainly in Thomas Aquinas the divine principle which 
animates and gives existence to things is all pervasive. It attains 
to consciousness of itself in the human soul. There the Platonic 
passion for truth, the discernment of the universal in the midst 



82 Windelband. P. 321. 

93 God and His Creatures. Rickaby's translation. Bk. I, Ch. IX. 

84 Ibid. Ch. XI. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 63 

of the manifold, the intelligence, or reason in its higher mani- 
festations, reveals the dark and half-blind processes by means of 
which the development itself is taking place. Truth as in Plato 
is seen to be the unifying principle that " gives form to what 
was otherwise formless, simplicity to what was complex, whole- 
ness to what was discrete." 95 

But Thomas Aquinas adds, " Wholesome is the arrangement 
of divine clemency whereby things even that reason can investi- 
gate are commanded to be held on faith, so that all might easily 
be partakers of the knowledge of God, and that without doubt 
or error." 

The contest concerning the primacy of the will or intellect 
brings into prominence the idea of the moral law as entertained 
by Thomas. It is God's command. This both sides admit. 
Thomas teaches that God commands the good because it is good 
and is recognized as good by his wisdom. Thus the Logos, the 
Divine wisdom, is the ultimate standard of truth and hence of the 
good. Eckhart, the great mystic of this period, supports this 
intellectualism of Thomas that teaches the rationality of the 
good. " Morals is a philosophic discipline whose principles are to 
be known by the natural light." 96 

Closely connected with this conception of the moral law is 
Thomas's treatment of law under four heads : the eternal, the 
natural, the human, the revealed. 

Eternal law to which the whole universe is subject and whose 
end. is God, pervades all things in the sense that " through it 
they are directed to the actions and ends proper to them." 97 
Inanimate things and irrational creatures only participate in it 
passively — the so-called law of similitude. They are subject to 
eternal law and blindly follow its bidding. Rational creatures, by 
the light of reason, discern what is good and evil. This light is 
the impression of the Divine light within enabling men to be 
sharers in Divine Providence for by it men are able to provide 
for themselves and others. This participation in eternal law is 
called natural law. This is recognised by reason, and in con- 
formity with this law rational creatures guide their conduct. 



95 Plato's Psychology in its bearing on Will. Mind. Apr., 1908. 



'96^7-' 



indelband. P. 332. 
Sum. 1.2. 



64 The Concept Standard 

Natural law is apprehended as general principles belonging to 
Eternal Law. Man cannot attain to the direct and immediate 
knowledge of its application to particular cases, and he must 98 
therefore use his reason to draw from those common and unde- 
monstrable principles, conclusions applicable to particular cases. 
These are human law." 

Besides eternal law, from which human law is derived through 
natural law, there is divine law, or revealed law — that of Scrip- 
ture. Thomas recognizes the shifting nature of " human law," 
adapted as it must necessarily be to varying conditions and 
periods. 

In the administration of law, " the office of the King is to 
procure for the multitude a good life which must be in harmony 
with the endeavor to attain to celestial beatitude. He must there- 
fore as far as possible direct the people to do those things which 
lead to eternal life, and forbid their doing anything opposed to 
this 1 ." 100 The final end of a society appears to be to live virtu- 
ously. " For men associate themselves together that all may 
live well, which would be impossible were each to live alone. 
But a good is a virtuous life. Therefore a virtuous life is trie 
end of human society." 101 To understand the content of the last 
quotation, it is necessary to recall Thomas's theory of the will 
and intellect. God wills what is good for man. This is a widely 
different conception from that of Duns Scotus that because God 
wills it, it is good. And good is understood to mean that which 
satisfies man's needs and desires if these are only sufficiently 
enlightened. Thomas would say it was possible that man through 
his reason could arrive at the same conception of good as that 
revealed by God. 

Mysticism in the Mediaeval Period 

The mysticism in Thomas Aquinas was always held in check 
by the Augustinian conception of Personality. The pantheism 
always inherent in Neo-Platonism was constantly emerging in 
the most radical of its adherents. The absorption in the eternal 



88 Ibid. 91. 3-0. 

99 Compare this conforming to a standard with Hobbes' conception of 
law as the arbitrary will of a sovereign. See Economic Review, 1896, 
P. 78. 

100 De Regimine Principium, 1. 15. 
111 Ibid. 1. 14. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 65 

generic reason of the human race was viewed as temporal par- 
ticipation. This in the fully developed forms of mysticism tended 
to destroy the conception of the individual soul as a persistent 
entity. The admixture of Arabian philosophy in the thirteenth 
century, with the attendant pantheism of the East brought later 
German mysticism which found its best expression in Eckhart 
and Tauler. The inevitable tendency of the Andalusian move- 
ment was to regard individual things as more or less transient 
forms in which the single substance, ens generalissimum, becomes 
realized. 

Man's rational knowing is, in this philosophy, an impersonal 
or supra-personal function : it is the individual's temporal par- 
ticipation in the eternal generic reason. 

This Pan-psychism was opposed by both Albert and Thomas 
because of the menace, as they conceived it, to the metaphysical 
value of personality. The tenacity with which the Christian 
philosophers held to the Augustinian doctrine regarding the 
experience which the individual has of itself as the highest prin- 
ciple, diverted the empiricist conceptions of the Arabians from 
their essential direction, as a study of nature's forces, to the 
study of active human life. " Real science," however, took a 
more secular aspect, as the science of the interrelations of human 
society, and found expression in Occam and Marsilius of Padua, 
and also in the more " inward " writing of history. The Platonic 
idea of contemplation as the highest state, the Aristotelian idea 
of complete happiness, the Neo-Platonic idea of immediate illumi- 
nation of the individual by the deity, the supra-rational appre- 
hension of truth, found their most intense expression in German 
mysticism. The mystical elements in Eckhart, curiously a dis- 
ciple of Thomas and Augustine, are his conception of the highest 
activity of the reason as immediate intellectual intuition, his 
denial of the being of all finite things, his demand that the indi- 
vidual self should be given up, and his doctrine of complete 
union with God as the supreme end of man. 102 " God is in all 
things as their intelligible principle ; but by as much as he is 
in all things, by so much is he also above them." 103 God com- 
municates himself to all things in the measure of their capability 
to receive him. In so far as he is in things, they work divinely 



Ueberweg. History of Philosophy. I. P. 483, 
Ueberweg. History of Philosophy. P. 470. 



66 The Concept Standard 

and reveal him. In things God has externalized his innermost 
essence : hence all things tend to return to God. This return 
is the end of all motion in created things. 104 

Morality — for Eckhart — is this restoration through the soul 
of all things to God. The condition of this return is " death 
to self, i. e., the abolition of creatureship : its end is the union of 
man with God. If thou wilt know God divinely, thy knowledge 
must be changed to ignorance, to oblivion of thyself and all crea- 
tures. This ignorance is synonymous with unlimited capacity 
for receiving * * * God needs only that man should give 
him a quiet heart. God will accomplish this himself; let man 
only follow and not resist. Not the reason alone, but the will 
also must transcend itself. Man must be silent that God may 
speak. * * * Give up thine individuality and comprehend 
thyself in thine unmixed human nature, as thou art in God: thus 
God enters into thee. * * * Individuality is a mere accident, 
a nothing: put off this nothing and all things are one. The 
One that remains is the Son whom the Father begets." 105 The 
man who has thus annihilated himself, has absolutely no will; 
he has abandoned himself completely to the will of God. This 
complete " decease " of self is the condition of the birth of God 
in the soul. "All moral action is nothing other than this bring- 
ing forth of the Son by the Father." 106 " This birth of God in 
the soul is irreversible." 

Virtuous action is purposeless action. * * * As God is 
free from all finite ends, so also is the righteous man. Desire 
nothing, thus wilt thou obtain God and in Him all things. Work 
for the sake of working, love for love's sake. * * * All that 
is contingent must be laid aside, including therefore virtue, in 
so far as it is a particular mode of action. Virtue must be a 
condition, my essential condition. * * * all virtues should 
become in me necessities, being performed unconsciously. Mor- 
ality consists not in doing, but in being. Works do not sanctify 
us, we sanctify works. * * * All virtues are one virtue. He 
who practices one virtue more than another is not moral. Love 



104 A penetration of an Eastern idea. 

105 Cit. P. 477. 

106 Cit. P. 478. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 67 

is the principle of all virtues. Love strives after the good. It 
is nothing other than God Himself." 107 

The lowest faculties of the soul must be subordinate to the 
highest, and the highest to God : the external senses must be 
subordinated to the internal senses, the latter to the understand- 
ing, the understanding to the reason, the reason to the will, and 
the will to unity, so that the soul may be " deceased " and nothing 
but God may enter into it. 

Thus the universal is the real ; it needs the individual, which 
receives being and permanence from the universal and can only 
through its immanence in the universal assert itself as real and 
permanent. 108 This mutual dependence of God and man so dar- 
ingly spoken by Eckhart is entirely foreign to religious concep- 
tion in general. It seems the unchecked development of the idea 
of sacrifice, begun of old, reverently viewed in the suffering of 
the God-man, and idealised in the Love of Christianity. The 
idea as set forth by Eckhart is more beautifully and temperately 
expressed in Thomas a Kempis. The Imitation of Christ has 
preserved for Christendom the best expression of Mysticism. 

The mysticism of Thomas a Kempis is relieved of the specu- 
lative character of the school of Eckhart. Eckhart was moved 
by a desire to communicate to his people the inmost truth in a 
manner that should take hold of every individual who heard. 
The necessity of putting these truths into popular language natu- 
rally stripped them of the logical combinations of fundamental 
ideas, and of the intricacies of dogma. In place of these came 
speculation which gave to the theorems of faith the spiritual 
vitality of one central idea, viz., the unity of the soul in reason 
and will with God. Being and knozvledge are one. The Son 
as eternally begotten in that revelation which is coincident with 
the identity of the soul with God, " involves the ideal totality 
of things." In being known by man, the world of sense finds 
again the true spiritual nature. Man's highest task is the elimi- 
nation of multiplicity and plurality. Man should endeavor to 
control the things of sense by reason, but should never fail to 
regard as highest, the complete withdrawal of the soul from the 
outer world. " In the act of knowing it reaches that purpose- 



107 Quoted from Eckhart in Ueberweg, I. P. 478. 

108 Quoted from Eckhart in Ueberweg, I. P. 472. 



68 The Concept Standard 

lessness of action, that action not constrained by an end, that 
freedom within itself, in which its beauty consists." 108 

The excesses of mysticism, in fact the highest manifestations 
of it, were due to the lack of provision in scholasticism for the 
emotional element in human beings. The concept of conscience 
for most of the scholastics was a kind of logical function. Emo- 
tion and will were left out of account. The latter executed the 
decisions of conscience, and while a certain amount of influence 
is indefinitely ascribed to the emotions, they are described in 
terms so intellectual as to ally them at once with the rational pro- 
cesses. 110 Mysticism seized upon the smothered religious feeling 
and carried it to the excesses it sometimes assumed. 

To sum up the conceptions of the Mediaeval period the fol- 
lowing may be considered essentials : Humanity had sinned ; 
Adam being the type of the essence of man. The will was not 
corrupted, but the cognitive- judging side had suffered. Man's 
will remained good, but the steersman of the will, reason, no 
longer gave adequate guidance. Man must continue to use his 
reason, refining it to its utmost possibilities, as is shown by the 
elaborate logical schemes. But he must recognize that it is not 
the ultimate criterion of truth. There is no true illumination 
of the intellect except by grace. Reason itself unaided is incap- 
able of controlling passion. Knowledge is the product of the 
reason, and of divine revelation of truth. The philosophy of 
the ancients is revelation under different conditions, but it must 
be measured by the fundamental truths of God's revelation in 
Christ. With this conception of knowledge as a revelation of 
truth, it is possible to will the good. Christian ethics took its 
tools from Greek ideas which it interpreted according to Christian 
ideas. The fundamental Greek conceptions that were accepted 
were that all men desire, will, the good or happiness, that the 
attainment of happiness is coincident with perfect knowledge 
or wisdom. The idea of good is identified with God, conceived 
as a metaphysical reality, the true being of everything, hence the 
only adequate object of true knowledge, — the supreme end of 
man's endeavor, the Good. This attainment is dependent upon 
wisdom, which is ultimately participation in divine nature. 



109 Windelband. P. 336. 

no Wundt, Ethics. P. 46. It is impossible not to connect the present 
status of the psychology of the emotions with this aspect. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 69 

Through grace God furnishes man with the conditions of regain- 
ing what he lost in his Fall, viz., knowledge of God, which knowl- 
edge includes all knowledge, since God is the true being of every- 
thing. 

The dignity of man is ensured in the God-man. The Church 
is the practical working embodiment of grace. The sacraments 
are outward signs of inward grace, which most directly affect 
man's conduct. The sacrament of penance through the confes- 
sional made the teachings of Christ effective. It was a tremendous 
force in regulating life. To understand the vitality and energy 
of this epoch, a few general features of the technique of control 
may aid : 

1. The great gulf between the natural and supernatural was 
mediated by the Word made flesh. 

2. The historic teleology was complete in the seizure upon all 
the tools of ancient thought that could be transformed into means 
of furthering the Faith. The idealization of contemplative vir- 
tues by Aristotle and Plato was the source of monastic orders, 
whose asceticism was necessary as an ideal in the civilization of 
barbarian hordes. 

3. The systematic accommodation to different aspects of 
human nature, to different temperaments, has never been paral- 
leled : For the spiritual-minded was a scheme of ideas beauti- 
fully symbolized; for the less spiritual, instrumentalities for 
keeping track of them. The impossible was never demanded, not 
even the exceptional, which was nevertheless encouraged in various 
ways. Man was expected to sin, but there was institutional pro- 
vision for keeping evil tendencies within limits. The integral 
part of faith was the future life. The meagre beginnings in this 
life have infinite time in future life for continuation under better 
conditions. 

4. The appeal made was to two motives which might seem 
contradictory : self-sacrifice, devotion to others ; and self-asser- 
tion, control of others. The renunciation of the clergy made pos- 
sible the advance in hierarchial democracy, where grades were 
not fixed by wealth. 

5. The church provided scope and opportunity for play of 
intelligence. It is difficult to understand the intellectual activity 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Intellectual acumen was 
very great. The Renaissance would be inconceivable if we imag- 



yo The Concept Standard 

ined the preceding period as lacking in intellectual activity. There 
was not a mere reaction against the church activity, but a carry- 
ing over of momentum generated in theological energy to other 
fields. It might be in keeping to quote a few lines from New- 
man's tribute to this period r 111 " In the capitals of Christendom 
the high cathedral and the perpetual choir still witness to the 
victory of Faith over the world's power. To see its triumph 
over the world's wisdom, we must enter those solemn cemeteries 
in which are stored the relics and monuments of ancient Faith, — 
our libraries. Look along their shelves, and every name you 
read there is in one sense or other a trophy set in record of the 
victories of Faith. How many long lives, what high aims, what 
single-minded devotion, what intense contemplation, what fer- 
vent prayer, what deep erudition, what untiring diligence, what 
toilsome conflicts has it taken to establish its supremacy." In 
Dante's Divine Comedy the long movement found its highest 
aesthetic expression. The central interest is the fate of souls, 
in particular the poet's soul. " Nothing could be more universal, 
and nothing could be more individual, nothing even more per- 
sonal. It is the climax of the long movement we have attempted 
to trace, in which the individual spirit has deepened into a uni- 
verse within, because it has widened into oneness with the uni- 
verse without. * * * No Hellene, however skilled a spec- 
tator in the theatre of this life, has portrayed the beauty and 
terror of visible and audible things with so true and piercing a 
touch as the mystic hierophant of another world." His genius 
is the product of this Mediaevalism. He is regarded as a transi- 
tion from the Mediaeval spirit to the spirit of the Renaissance. 
Beyond question his work has marked affiliations with modern 
spirit, 112 while its cosmology and formal doctrine are Mediaeval. 
It may be probable that the projection of ethical psychology into 
the physical form allowed of liberty being taken with the concep- 
tion of the latter. Symbolic art takes these liberties freely. The 
important thing is the fusion of the ethical and physical, presaging 
as it did the transfiguration of nature from something to be gotten 
away from to a manifestation of the divine, having inherent value 
of its own as an object of study, a content of art, even a guide 
and model for regulation of life. 

111 Newman, Oxford University Sermons, P. 315. 

112 Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic. Chap. VII. Gives Bosanquet's 
elaboration of this idea. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 71 

Section III 

Evolution of Dominating Ideas Whose Birth Is Assigned 
Popularly to the Renaissance 

The interpenetration of the evolutionary idea has done much to 
remove misconceptions of this period of the Renaissance. The 
most glaring of these and probably the most persistent is the 
notion that the Renaissance is the beginning of modern life. " The 
long struggle for intellectual and political freedom which still 
gives tone to our aspirations, appears to us to have had its starting 
point in the revival of Greek learning and the awakening of phys- 
ical science. * * * But any such view is coming to be less 
and less approved by the deepest and most sympathetic criti- 
cism." 113 Bosanquet traces further and further back into the 
earlier middle age the intellectual attitude assumed by the Medi- 
aeval Church and its greatest thinkers toward formative art and 
the sense of beauty. Because beauty is always associated with 
that which is deemed most worth while and desirable, this associ- 
ation becomes a means of learning the standard vital at the time. 
Too often the tendency has been to ignore the desire and effort 
preceding the fruition, and too often to identify in point of time 
the desire with its realization. " What youth desires, old age 
abounds in." So the " aesthetic interest was first attracted to the 
full-blown and later Renaissance both in letters, in painting, and 
in architecture, and only worked backwards by degrees to Gothic 
buildings and early Tuscan painters." 114 A study extended in 
French literature reveals the beginnings of that Romanticism so 
evident in Dante. In architecture, St. Sophia, built in 530 A. D., 
made possible the thousand years of beautiful buildings culmi- 
nating in St. Peter's. Thus is justified the reference to the art 
of the sixth century A. D. as " the sign of a ' true renaissance,' 
which does not mean a rebirth of ' classical ' forms, but rather 
a rebirth of the human spirit in a vesture entirely new, though 
woven of the robes it had laid aside." 115 Sympathy with nature 
is ordinarily conceived as something engrafted upon humanity in 
the sixteenth century. In truth, passages from Gregory of Nyassa, 
from Origen, from Chrysostom are filled with an appreciation 



113 Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic. P. 120. 

114 Cit. P. 120. 

115 Cit. P. 126. 



"]2, The Concept Standard 

of nature essentially " modern " in spirit. Art as interpretation 
finds its tribute in the mastery the Christian painters attained 
" over the expression of the face, before they could deal ade- 
quately with the figure, whereas with the Greek sculptors the 
order was the reverse of this." 116 This truth symbolises the 
point of emphasis. Thus the profound conception of Plotinus 
was maintained by the intellectual consciousness of Christendom. 
The underlying thought is that nature and art are beautiful in 
so far as they " worthily symbolise the Divine power and good- 
ness, and do not appeal to sensuous interest or desire. * * * 
There seems always the conditional admission that material beauty 
is divine, if rightly and purely seen." This idea was strengthened 
by the great step taken in the fourth century, whereby evolution 
was declared by Christian dogma 117 to be the one supreme prin- 
ciple by which there is a progressive content which " does not 
lose anything nor become secondary by the fact of this develop- 
ment." This doctrine took the place of the interpretation of the 
doctrine of emanation by which the first is best, the second a 
little less perfect, and so on. 

It seemed consistent to the Christian successors of Plotinus 
to regard nature as God's work, superior to art conceived as 
man's work, and this dualism persisted in the same age that 
accepted evolutionary monism as the principle of orthodox the- 
ology. 118 Erigena following Gregory of Nyassa regarded the 
ugly as that not perceived in its true relation to the will of God, 
and insisted that it was the order laid down by divine law to 
know the Creator first " in his unspeakable beauty, and then to 
regard creation in a significant or spiritual sense, conforming to 
the inclinations of the intelligence, and to interpret the whole of 
its beauty whether it exist inwardly in significance or outwardly 
in sensible forms as showing the praise of the Creator." 119 Uni- 
versal significance of things cannot be claimed as a parasitic 
outgrowth of the religious thought of the sixteenth or eighteenth 
centuries. Symbolism is a mode of interpretation and communi- 
cation, that has at least the advantage of absolute universality. 120 
That beauty is the revelation of reason in sensuous shape, that 



Cit. P. 130. 

Cit. P. 132. 

Cit. P. 132. 

Cit. P. 142. 

Cit. P. 143. 



Reviczv of Conception of the Standard J2> 

its fascination consists in its affinity with" mind, and that conse- 
quently the entire sensible universe as a symbol of Divine reason, 
must be beautiful to the eye that can see it in relation to its 
Creator, all this had sunk deep into Christian sentiment and is 
familiar to us both in profound and in shallow readings of the 
argument from design. Unquestionably, the middle age, through- 
out its long development, was inspired by this conviction uncon- 
scious in its art which was an achievement, but conscious in its 
theory which was a postulate." 121 

Bosanquet's recognition of the import of the time characterised 
often as the Dark Ages is in itself a seeing of relations on a 
widening scale. " To make the first sketch-plan of a new life, 
and teach its use to illiterate peoples " was a work that in its 
immensity must lose sight of details that, nevertheless, as under- 
currents were gathering force and revealing their existence in 
the intervals of peace that allowed of their emergence. In the 
throes where a new civilization was in making " neither the 
philosophy of the great Greek classics, nor the wide survey of 
methodic natural science would have met fairly and squarely the 
problems that pressed upon Augustine, Erigena, or Dante." 122 
When it is urged against this period that philosophy was made 
subservient to theology, it might be urged in defence that it was 
a " subordination of science to a formulated conception of human 
welfare, with a strictly mundane if also a transcendental side." 
The most frequently expressed criticism of the metaphysics of 
this period is that it is mere verbalism or theoretical subtlety at 
best. This attitude is what naturally follows the practical turn 
of mind that is in the ascendancy in present civilization. Bosan- 
quet urges that it might be worth while " to raise the question of 
whether the weakness of mediaeval science and philosophy was 
not connected rather with excess of practice than with excess of 
theory. The question is not unimportant for it indicates that the 
essence of scholasticism is present, not wherever there is meta- 
physics, but wherever the spirit of truth is subordinated to any 
preconceived practical intent, whether mundane or extra-mun- 
dane." 123 To-day the subtleties of philosophy and of logic are 
applied to subordinate the instinctive spiritual truths so necessary 



121 Cit. P. 1 49 . 

122 Cit. P. i 4 i. 

123 Cit. P. i 4 6. 



74 The Concept Standard 

to the life of numbers of humanity to the essentially mundane 
goods so in the foreground of industrialism. 124 Scholarly research 
is revealing in the lives of the great thinkers of the scholastic 
period, active, devoted public service, the content of which reveals 
the vitality of their writings. The names of great Franciscans 
and Dominicans foremost, among whom are St. Francis of Assisi 
and St. Thomas Aquinas, are convincing examples. 

Renaissance Ideas Tending to Modify the Standard 
In Nicolaus Cusanus is found this purposeful unfolding accord- 
ing to law, the ultimate significance of which is conception of 
man as a microcosm. All substances are present in every thing, 
yet each has its special principle of life and activity. 125 God 
transcends all knowledge, but is accessible in ecstatic vision. God 
the Father is pure thought; the Son, the Logos, is the matter 
side ; the Holy Spirit is the union of these, pure motion. 

This idea of motion was carried over into cosmology. Nature 
was an unfolding of a single principle of movement. The uni- 
verse itself was conceived as boundless in space and time. The 
world becomes under this conception a soul-possessing and articu- 
late whole. 126 Everything if comprehended mirrors forth in its 
place the universe. Every being preserves its existence by virtue 
of its community with all others. Man should love each thing in 
its relation to the whole. " God is the absolute maximum, the 
world the unfolded maximum, the image of God's perfection." 
By his anticipation of the Copernican theory of the universe, 
man's relation to that universe is reconceived. The doctrine of 
man as a microcosm brought with it the duty of harmonious 
development, which found expression in the various theories of 
self-realisation. The theory concerning the unity of contra- 
dictories 127 reaches its fullest expression in the reconciliation of 
the finite and infinite in the God-man. Nothwithstanding that 
Cusanus is the forerunner of much of modern thought in his 
attitude toward knowledge, his theology remains that of the 
church, with an emphasis on mysticism. 

Pomponazzi (1462-1525) took immortality from philosophy, 
because it was made a motive, instead of love of beauty and 



124 This point will be elaborated in a succeeding chapter. 

125 Windelband, Cit. P. 371. 

126 Ueberweg, Modern Philosophy P. 24. 

127 Reappearing in Hegel. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 75 

goodness for their own sakes. Motives of morality must be found 
in the present life. 

The separation of the natural and supernatural was conceived 
as a barrier to realization ; therefore the idea that God is in life, 
in nature, became more and more emphasized. The pantheistic 
view flourishes whenever there is an attempt to get away from 
hard and fast regulations that limit the sphere of human activity. 
The natural outcome is the teaching of the immanence of the 
divine in nature and humanity, which justifies the increased value 
and significance placed upon the goods of this life. Then easily 
followed the belief that Nature did repay human study, because 
of the principles of universals, which were manifest to those who 
sought them. The presence of order or design was evidence of 
the indwelling deity. We reach Giordano Bruno's idea of a 
" God-informed, God-governed universe, a universe embodying 
power, wisdom, and love, a universe essentially accessible to the 
human conscience partially now and progressively with the 
progress of that conscience." 

The deduction from the various philosophers of this period was 
that there was something in nature that was worth while, which 
would help man rather than hinder him. The result of this was 
to place value on earthly possessions and ends as opposed to those 
of a future life. Then the relation of morals to efficiency was 
urged as a problem. Machiavelli called attention to this by his 
repudiation of any moral restraint in realizing an end. Excep- 
tional men, he held, may use any means to an end. He advises 
careful consideration of the end : then knowing what is involved, 
to plunge. The step once taken there is no retreat. The use of 
any means intelligence and force place at command is commended. 
Success justifies anything; Success is the standard. The technique 
of exploitation is worked out in the case of an ambitious man, 
in Machiavelli's " The Prince." The forcefulness of the presen- 
tation brings into strong light the practical advantages and disad- 
vantages of moral law. The government is to be the authority to 
keep men's appetites in check. Hoffding says of Machiavelli that 
like so many realists, 128 he lost reality because he sought it in 
the surface of events. Idealistic ends are the source of contempt, 



128 Realists in the new sense — the direct opposite of the type heretofore 
termed realist. The change in the use of the term indicates the transfer 
of the focus of attention. 



y6 The Concept Standard 

as also the Church because it taught submission. It is imprac- 
ticable to have an end unless you have the means to realize it. 
Any means are allowable toward the accomplishment of an end. 
" Men know not how to be splendidly wicked or wholly good." 
It is well to seem to have virtues, which if really possessed would 
be a disadvantage or a hindrance to success. The result of such 
a standard (Success), is ably pictured by Sumner in his account 
of the Renaissance period. Disintegration was inevitable. 

The • revival of learning in the north had a different ethical 
effect. Renewed knowledge of Scripture and of the early Church 
Fathers' doctrines was an effort to give ethical interpretation to 
existing ecclesiastical and institutional rites and ordinances. 
Erasmus was the exponent of this within the Church. He saw 
in general education the chief instrument of moral reform, and 
consequently a fundamental method of social control. The six- 
teenth century witnessed the revolt of Protestantism, and the 
transfer of control from the clergy to the civic authorities. The 
right of private judgment, the inwardness of faith as the sole 
way to eternal life, the total corruption of human nature, the 
universal and absolute imperativeness of Christian duties, the 
repudiation of the doctrine of supererogation are the changes 
most saliently urged. Ethically considered " these changes, how- 
ever profoundly important, were either negative or quite general, 
relating to the tone or attitude of mind in which all duty should 
be done. As regards all positive matter of duty or virtue, and 
most of the prohibitive code for ordinary men, the tradition of 
Christian teaching was carried on substantially unchanged in the 
discourses and writings of the Reformed churches." 129 

Section IV 

Effect of the Protestant Revolt on the Conception of 
the Standard 

In Luther's method there is much that suggests Descartes. 
Descartes used doubt to unload and then took back discarded 
beliefs, introducing difference of method. Luther virtually did 
the same. The principle of subjective individuality as conceived 
by Luther and his immediate followers required a philosophical 



Sidgwick. History of Ethics. P. 152. 



Review of Conception of the Standard JJ 

basis. The demand for such was met at first by a denial of Aris- 
totelian principles, but subsequently by a resumption of these. 

The minimizing of good works was a theoretical inference from 
the belief in the transformation of natural man to spiritual man 
through an act of faith alone. It was clearly attitude versus 
accomplishment. The significant question became : Where is the 
standard of morality to be found? Can motive and consequence 
be isolated in respective spheres ? In the doctrine of sanctification, 
which is to be interpreted as freedom from external law, there 
is lurking an anti-social element. 

The private interpretation of Scripture left ample scope for 
casuistry. It became difficult to extract from so many sects an 
ethical code that would meet with a sufficiently general acceptance 
to serve as a foundation for society. The effect of making Scrip- 
ture the sole, unerring guide, containing inherent evidence of its 
truth, has been suicidal to Protestantism. Biblical criticism has 
attacked this foundation and weakened it to such an extent that 
many have come to distrust the validity of the standards that 
have been and are still the vital principles of our present civili- 
zation. These results were not immediately felt, but have been the 
more remote consequences of the earlier attitude. The more 
immediate effects are only recently being revealed and appreciated. 
The more subtle, vital, and permanent influences have been 
obscured by the grosser manifestations of the intense feeling 
attendant upon the movement. The intoxication of the feeling 
of freedom from living sanction or authority in one sphere, spread 
into others. That the full significance of their attitude was not 
grasped by the Reformers is evidenced in Luther's treatment of 
the Peasant's Revolt in Germany. The idea was not recognized 
in another sphere. 

The interpretation of individuality as the right to assign values 
rather than to ascertain them in experience led from a distrust 
of institutions to their repudiation as evidenced theoretically in 
Rousseau and actually in the French Revolution. The Peasant's 
Revolt in Germany and the French Revolution embodied the 
same idea. The one succeeded, the other did not, in establishing, 
temporarily at least, the worth of the idea. It remains for suc- 
ceeding generations to discern the inherent truth in the idea in 
its relations to other truths. 



78 The Concept Standard 

Beginning of the Isolation of Experimental Method 

Bacon, followed by Hobbes, brought about a great change in 
intellectual attitude. Bacon's belief that the mind has power to 
correctly interpret accumulated facts, with Hobbes' needed curb 
to this extreme inductive view in the conception of mathematical 
control, and more especially his substitution of the idea of gener- 
ation for transformation, together made experimentation the basis 
of control. 

Hobbes' psychology is materialistic. Reality is a material 
process. Pleasure and pain are essentially forms of motion, the 
one " helping vital action," the other " retarding it." Materialism 
intrinsically regards all impulse as directed toward preservation 
of the material organism. Hobbes' main contention as to the 
complete selfishness of man is the logical outcome of materialism. 
With Epicurean reasoning the so-called altruistic or social 
impulses are all traced ultimately to self-seeking. Hobbes' con- 
tribution to Epicurean philosophy is, that rules of social behavior 
limited as they must be to furthering indirectly man's preser- 
vation or pleasure, must be secured in the only way to make them 
universally coercive, by the intervention of government. For the 
authority of the Church, Hobbes substitutes that of the State, 
and that State a despotism. This viewpoint is claimed by some to 
be the necessary reaction to the anarchy among warring sects, 
the result of the so-called liberty of conscience, — the main thesis 
of the Protestant Revolt. Hobbism with uncompromising egoism 
as its standard and necessary positive law for particular moral 
rules was a sufficiently coherent theory to furnish a point of 
departure for schools of ethicists. 

Reaction to Hobbism 

Cudworth of the Cambridge Platonists claimed the objective 
reality of the essential and eternal distinctions of good and evil. 
He emphasizes the inconsistency of Hobbes in presupposing an 
objective physical world cognizable to the intellect, and in denying 
a similar exercise of the intellect in an objective world of duty. 
Cumberland claims man's essential socialty, and lays down the 
rule " that all rationals should aim at the common good of all " 
as the supreme rule of morality or " Law of Nature." To support 
the fact of its being a law of nature, he provides sanctions referred 



Review of Conception of the Standard 79 

to the law-giver, God. These sanctions compel obedience to the 
law by determining the agent's happiness. 

It is evident from the reaction to Hobbes that Empiricism had 
not yet won the supremacy in English philosophy. Scholasticism 
had been confined to narrower limits and Skepticism flourished 
apace. 

Is there here in theme and sequence a miniature cycle of suc- 
ceeding thought? Are the fundamental ideas of Kant, Darwin, 
and Spencer, anticipated respectively by Bacon's discussion of 
efficient causes, Hobbes' substitution of generation for trans- 
formation, and Cumberland's assertion of the common good as the 
supreme rule of morality ? 

Section V 
Method of Descartes in Determining the Standard 

Descartes determined to do away with all presuppositions and 
by completely ridding himself of all such preconceived ideas, to 
deliberately establish a philosophy, every point of which was abso- 
lutely verifiable. His first postulate, Cogito Sum, seems, in its 
import the same as that of Augustine, Dubito Sum. Augustine 
valued the self-certainty of the soul as the surest experience from 
which as a point of departure he built up a psychology of the 
will, and gave to his successors the idealized conception of per- 
sonality. Descartes in a slightly different way viewed the Cogito 
Sum as the first fundamental rational truth, and builds his system 
of philosophy on the maxim : Everything must be true that is as 
clear and distinct as self -consciousness. In this statement is con- 
centrated the essence of the Cartesian system, viz., its point of 
departure as Cogito Sum, and its method of quantitative determi- 
nations. "As clear and distinct as self-consciousness " is mathe- 
matical in statement. Descartes recognizes the sensuous appre- 
hension of the qualitative as " imagination " while the appre- 
hension of that which can be mathematically constructed he terms 
" intellectual " knowledge. " To that which I know clearly and 
distinctly I may assent, for that clear and distinct knowledge 
must be true follows from God's veracity." 130 He thus assumes 
that only clear and distinct presentations have the compelling 
power on the mind that forces recognition. Error results in the 



130 Quoted in Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, II 2 :5o. 



80 The Concept Standard 

will's affirming or denying arbitrarily when confused presentations 
are the data. " The cause of all error arises from the fact that 
my power of willing reaches further than my understanding and 
that I do not confine the exertion of the former within the limits 
demanded by the latter, but that instead of withholding my judg- 
ment I presume to judge also of that which I do not understand." 
This idea is the basis of Descartes' ethics. Right willing and 
action follow clear rational knowledge : sin and error follow the 
abuse of freedom in willing and acting from the obscure and 
confused impulses of the sensibility alone. 

The ethical ideal is the Socratic-Stoic ideal of the rule of reason 
over the sensibility. The Stoicism of Cartesianism, with infusion 
of Christian ideas, is evident in the following: "The true object 
of our love being perfection, when we lift our minds to consider 
God as He is, we feel ourselves naturally so strongly disposed 
to love Him that we derive joy even from our afflictions, remem- 
bering that in all that happens to us His will is fulfilled." 131 
Life's external order may be disturbed, but not the inner har- 
monv of the soul. Accidents are necessary and are a part of God's 
purpose, hence man can do nothing but desire them. To make 
our will and our understanding one with the will of God, — in 
this lies the whole of morality. The Supreme Good is good will 
which alone depends on man's self. To know is to will rightly; 
hence wisdom should be our ideal. In striving for wisdom, man 
finds happiness. 132 

Psychological Basis of Cartesian Principles 
The psychology on which Descartes bases his principle of cer- 
titude is that of a " reasoned realist." 133 Man is able to dis- 
tinguish the idea of a thing from the idea of a mere mental fancy. 
The mind, being a res cogitans, must be conscious of its acts; 
man is conscious of having formed an idea {idea a me ipso facta), 
and is equally conscious of the non-interference of the will when 
an idea comes from the outside {idea adventitial . He knows 
in the last case that whether he wills it or no, the idea represents 
something controlled from outside the mind. Descartes finds a 
sanction for this certitude in God's veracity. 134 

131 Letter to Princess Elizabeth, 13th June, 1645. 

132 Janet, Problems of Philosophy, II. P. 56. 

133 Turner, History of Philosophy, P. 454. 

134 Descartes in a measure reasons in a circle, because he has already 
established God's existence on the reliableness of the cognitive powers. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 81 

Metaphysical Basis 

The principle which underlies the reasoning of Descartes is 
that to be conscious of a limit is to transcend it. Consciousness 
of our existence as individuals — self-consciousness — is impos- 
sible without the consciousness of something not ourselves, and 
necessarily of a unity in which both self and not self are included. 
Descartes reasons that all ideas of the finite are a limitation of 
the idea of the infinite; that to be conscious of the various limi- 
tations conveys with it as part of the essence of this consciousness 
the idea of the infinite — the Idea of God. This idea is not one 
of many ideas, but is the pervasive idea in all ideas, by which 
alone they have existence. " I ought never to suppose that my 
conception of the infinite is a negative idea, got by negation of 
the finite, just as I conceive repose to be merely negation of move- 
ment, and darkness merely the negation of light. On the con- 
trary, I see manifestly there is more reality in the infinite than 
in the finite substance, and that therefore I have within me the 
notion of the infinite, even in some sense prior to the finite, or in 
other words that the notion of myself in some sense presupposes 
the notion of God ; for how could I doubt or desire, how could 
I be conscious of anything as a want, how could I know I am 
not altogether perfect, if I had not in me the idea of a being more 
perfect than myself, by comparison with whom I recognize the 
defects of my own existence ?" 135 To think a series of approxi- 
mations implies as an intrinsic part of the thought, a standard 
which Descartes unhesitatingly pronounces consciousness of the 
infinite. 

Descartes sees nothing in this conception of the infinite to 
exclude the existence of finite things. " What would become 
of the power of that imaginary infinite if it could create nothing? 
Perceiving in ourselves the power of thinking we can easily con- 
ceive that there should be a greater intelligence elsewhere. And 
even if we should suppose that intelligence increased ad infinitum 
we need not fear that our own would be lessened. And the same 
is true of all other attributes which we ascribe to God, even of 
his power, provided only that we do not suppose that the power 
in us is not subjected to God's will. In all points, therefore, He 
is infinite without an exclusion of created things." 136 

135 Meditatio tertia, P. 21. 
f m Respon. ad sec. object., P. 75. 



82 The Concept Standard 

It seems strange that Descartes while anticipating many modern 
theories of motion, 137 and at the same time recognizing the sec- 
ondary qualities, taste, color, etc., of material things as modes 
of consciousness, should have failed to grasp the comprehensive 
idea of the organic relation of mind and matter as necessary 
moments of one process of experiencing. In the subjectivism 
mentioned concerning the secondary qualities, he paved the way 
for the idealism of subsequent philosophers. But the absolute 
antithesis between mind and matter made the union of soul and 
body merely a mechanical one, and created that chasm to bridge 
which has exhausted the energies of philosophers since that time. 

To Descartes may be traced the unnecessary antagonism 
between those who believe in the spirituality of the human soul 
and those who insist on the value of experimental method in the 
study of psychic phenomena. 

The most noteworthy contribution of Cartesian philosophy is 
the essentially deductive or mathematical method as opposed to 
the so-called Baconian method. By a strange " irony of fate " 138 
again, physical science owes more to Descartes than to Bacon. 
In answer to the inevitable question, Are the antagonisms just 
cited, real or imaginary in the last case, the result of emphasis 
merely? the conviction is forced that in a reinterpretation of 
Descartes there is to be found light on modern problems. 

Spinoza's Pantheistic Conception the Logical Result of the Theory 
of Occasionalism 

The pantheism of Spinoza is the unchecked development of 
the Occasionalism present in germ in Descartes and developed by 
Geulincx and Malebranche. The theory of " Occasional Causes " 
or " Divine Assistance " is the result of the presupposition that 
body and soul are independently complete substances. Descartes 
claimed that the influence of the soul upon the body was not real. 
Malebranche develops the idea more fully: there can be no rela- 
tion between things so different. The will is powerless to influence 
bodily movements; but it can determine the will of God, who 
thereupon produces the effect. 139 " God is the sole immediate 
and direct cause of all my movements. His activity is exerted 



137 See Turner, loc. cit. P. 456. 

138 "Irony of fate" indicates a lurking truth as yet unrecognized. 

139 Driscoll, Discussion in Christian Philosophy, 1898. P. 170. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 83 

upon the occasion of ideas or of resolves in my mind. . . . The 
act of the body is the occasion, not the cause." To this doctrine 
Leibnitz opposed, later, his theory of " Pre-established Harmony." 
He reproached Descartes for degrading the Divinity by com- 
paring God to a watchmaker who having made a clock is still 
obliged to turn the hands. But Leibnitz still holds to the inde- 
pendence of soul and body: the acts of the soul form a pro- 
gressive series, and the acts of the body another series ; but God 
in the beginning foresaw what the actions would be and estab- 
lished a harmony between one and the other. Thus the soul and 
the body can' be compared to two watches which were regulated 
and wound up. " In both, the minute and hour hands point to 
the same identical place; but one watch goes entirely inde- 
pendently of the other ; the spring which gives motion to one is 
not the same as that which gives motion to the other." 

The doctrine, as Spinoza received it from the immediate suc- 
cessors of Descartes, was that God by Divine decree has ordained 
that material things should be the occasions of effects which He 
alone produces. This is pantheism held in check by faith in 
Christian revelation. Spinoza at this point substitutes the panthe- 
ism of Giordano Bruno. With Geulincx and Malebranche, God is 
the Creator; with Spinoza, He is universal essence or nature of 
things : not God in the world but God as the world. 

Spinoza's Identification of Knozuledge with Will 

Closely associated with this idea is that of universal necessity 
or determinism. According to this the moral sanction is not 
founded on responsibility, but is a consequence of the necessary 
fixed order of things. " Every event is justified by the very fact 
of its occurrence, which is in immediate connection with the 
supreme necessity." 140 Man's endeavor should be to understand 
and to love this immutable order. The knowledge of truth thus 
becomes the noblest good. The possibility of this is seen only 
after a comprehension of Spinoza's theory of parallelism. 

Through a parallelism of thought and extension of the two 
attributes of the One Substance, the psychical is substantially 
identical with the extended which is perceived as material and 
follows the laws of mechanics. All particular thoughts have God 



'Janet, Problems of Philosophy, II. P. 62. 



84 The Concept Standard 

as a thinking being, just as all particular bodies have God as an 
extended being, for their cause ; ideas are not caused by perceived 
things, and things are not caused by thoughts. But the things 
of which we have ideas follow in the same way and with the 
same necessity from their attribute as do our ideas from the attri- 
bute of thought ; the order and connection of ideas is the same as 
the order and connection of things ; for the attributes from which 
the former and the latter respectively follow express the essence 
of one substance. 141 

" He who knows anything knows also by the very fact that he 
knows it. The mind knows itself only in so far as it perceives 
the ideas of the affections of the body. . . . All ideas are true 
so far as they are referable to God, for all ideas which are in God 
agree perfectly with their objects. Every idea which is in us as 
an absolute or adequate idea is true, for every such idea is in God, 
in so far as the latter constitutes the essence of the human mind." 

The mind is more capable of forming adequate ideas, the more 
its body has in common with other bodies. These notiones com- 
munes, or adequate ideas of the peculiarities of things, belong to 
the kind of cognition called reason. The truth of such an idea 
is apprehended as such by him who entertains it. The will to 
affirm or deny ideas is not a causeless arbitrary act; it is the 
necessary consequence of the ideas. The zvill in Spinoza is iden- 
tical with the intellect. 1 * 2 To discover the true order of ideas that 
parallels the order and connection of things, i.e., to know the truth, 
becomes man's moral endeavor. 

Spinoza's Doctrine of Self-Realization 
Added to this conception is the self-realizing impulse through 
the three stages of knowledge. In the plane of confused knowl- 
edge, the mind is conscious of the effort to extend its being by 
breaking through the " modes " that hem it in. This conscious- 
ness is emotion and indicates whether the modes affecting it 
through the body are diminishing or increasing the power of 
thought. " Where a mode of the body, as the sight of a rose, 
increases the mind's activity, there results the emotion of pleasure 
or joy ; where a mode of the body, as having bad news, diminishes 
the mind's activity, there results the emotion of sadness. Love 

141 Ethics, Prop. 7. 

142 Ethics, 2-49. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 85 

is the idea of an external thing which is a cause of joy, and 
hatred the idea of a thing which is the cause of sadness." 143 In 
this last idea, the influence of Hobbes on Descartes' conceptions 
is evident. 

Spinoza's conception of self-preservation finds coincidence, 
almost with Hobbes's theory of governmental control, as the most 
efficient and certain means for the satisfaction of egoism. This 
virtually denies the possibility of an individual standard of right 
and wrong in the practical sphere. 

The illusion of the finite — sense, imagination, passion — is 
viewed as the source of all error. The exaltation of the present 
moment into a standard of measuring the universe is the result 
of first raising the individual life to such a unit. The highest 
good is to live the universal life of reason, to view all things from 
their center in God, to be moved only by the intellectual love of 
God. To love things that perish is to love that which can never 
satisfy, and the pursuit of such perishable things brings a train 
of evils — envy, jealousy, etc. The only felicity is to love an 
object which is infinite and eternal. But our love rests upon our 
knowledge. 

It is difficult to conceive of a manipulation of logic to justify 
in a sense an almost Machiavellian ethics of self-realization, to 
confirm a governmental sanction and authority with Hobbes, and 
to affirm with Malebranche the only perfect satisfaction is to be 
found in the " love of God." Like Malebranche, Spinoza says, 
" We needs must love the highest when we see it." To be able 
to do this man must rise from the domination of opinion. Under 
such sway, things are viewed in an arrested moment of inter- 
relationing, as complete in themselves. The imagination pictures 
as complete what it is impossible for thought to conceive as such. 
The range of possibility narrows to the degree the understanding 
and not the imagination has sway. To perfected knowledge pos- 
sibility becomes necessity ; absolute unity is the goal : all nature 
is as one individual " whose parts vary through an infinite num- 
ber of modes without change of the whole individual." " And 
as to the human mind, I think of it also as a part of nature, for 
I think of nature as having in it an infinite power of thinking 
which as infinite contains in itself the idea of all nature and whose 
thoughts run parallel with all existence." 144 

143 Quoted in Turner's History of Philosophy, P. 430. 

144 Fifteenth letter. . 



86 The Concept Standard 

The idea of absolute unity is involved in the idea of each par- 
ticular thing. It is man's blindness to this idea that makes him 
a slave to confusion and disaster. Man is free only in so far 
as " ideas either immediately are, or can be made, adequate." 
Our idea of God or of Absolute Unity is adequate; our ideas of 
the afflictions of the body are inadequate and can be made ade- 
quate only by referring them to the idea of God. " The idea of 
God is as it were the touchstone which distinguishes the gold 
from dross." 145 

Spinoza's idea of abstract affirmation as deity, and his accom- 
panying idea of the negative as nothing, leaves no place for asceti- 
cism in his ethical theory. The morality he advances is Machia- 
vellian in its self-assertion or self-seeking. The negative element 
is never admitted. Man's affirmation of his natural self which 
Spinoza conceives as having much in common with animals and 
all beings, is affirmation apparently not different in kind from 
that highest affirmation which is identification with God's love. 
Spinoza confesses in the following statement his own inability to 
comprehend this all-leveling logic of pantheism : " I confess I 
cannot understand how spirits express God more than the other 
creatures, for I know that between the finite and the infinite there 
is no proportion. . . ." 

Effect of This Exaggerated Spiritualism 
That the exaggeration of the concept of spirituality culminating 
in Spinoza's pantheism should bring a protest in the form of an 
exaggerated materialism is only another instance of the rhythmic 
alteration of opposite emphases. A movement initiated by a 
desire to free the spiritual from its threatened materialization, 
resulted in the materialistic philosophy which spread and prevailed 
in France during the eighteenth century. 

On the other hand, the theory of Spinoza became one of the 
centers of German idealism. Reinterpreted in the light of inter- 
action of mind and matter, spirit and sense, it may be said to be 
the basis or source of the double-aspect theory, finding its closest 
relationship in the logic of Hegel. 

The most manifest inconsistency in Spinoza's logic is the 
attempt to save enough of the idea of personality or individuality 



_ 145 _ Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, V, P. 158. Article, Carte- 
sian ism. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 87 

to afford a semblance of a basis for morality. Consciousness 
of this inconsistency is inevitable ; at first, it is forced by the 
fact that the conception of freedom is rescued from the logic only 
in the so-called ethical field of the control by the reason of the 
senses and passions. It becomes more and more evident in the 
elaboration of the last idea. Something is the matter with the 
logic as soon as it is applied to the practical sphere of conduct. 
Spinoza himself was conscious of this. 

Cartesianism is regarded as the first movement of modern 
philosophy. The intelligible world emerges into greater impor- 
tance, the result of what has been shown to be a cumulative 
interest in material philosophy. This interest popularly ascribed 
to the Renaissance period, has been shown to have had its origin 
in remoter periods, and to have progressively evolved as the 
control of civilization asserted itself through the medium of the 
world's new religion. The nature of man had been progressively 
freed for higher activities by control of the elemental forces of 
that nature. 146 The mind of the scholar had been sharpened by 
the dialectic of scholasticism: the world of men had been at 
school. 

In Descartes, then, matter was emphasized as limitation. It 
was raised by Spinoza to be the equal of mind, and by a curious 
inconsistency viewed as negation. The inconsistency is the result 
of the attempt to bridge the duality between mind and matter, 
an attempt to formulate the idea of unity which he felt existed 
between the intelligible world and the mind of man. His logic 
defeats his purpose of dignifying matter. As a complement to 
this absorption of all things under the form of eternity, the schools 
of Locke and Leibnitz asserted the equally one-sided view of 
individuality and difference. The English school forced con- 
sideration of experience viewed under the form of time. With 
what method and what results, will now be considered. 

Section VI 

The Psychological Method of Determining the Standard 

With much of the spirit of Descartes, Locke undertook to lay 

a basis for measuring objective truth. His method was one of 

measuring the powers of the intellect, and by estimation of these 



146 It is here that Monasticism has fulfilled, its mission. 



38 The Concept Standard 

to provide against their being applied to problems beyond their 
scope. 

Assuming the objective reality of extension, he accounts for 
certain ideas as copies of such real qualities as bulk, number, 
figure, situation, motion, or rest. In dealing with color, sound, 
smell, and taste to which he likewise ascribes the term qualities, 
secondary qualities, he finds it necessary to admit that they are 
not copies in any sense, but are of the mind. He is unable to 
give any explanation of the transmutation of sensations into such 
ideas. 147 

Locke seems to be uncertain as to just where the principle of 
control lies. Real qualities in objects place it " without the 
mind." " Secondary qualities " cannot be explained otherwise 
than " of the mind." He seems more concerned with the attitude 
toward knowledge-getting, than with framing any philosophical 
system. He urges repeatedly the control by knowledge; at one 
time regretting that men do not think for themselves, at another 
urging them to widen the range of experience in order to escape 
the consequences of limitation of experience. Emphasizing always 
experience as the source of knowledge, and showing at the same 
time that knowledge is necessary for right conduct, he regards 
this active use of our faculties as the chief means of honoring 
the Deity. 

The emphasis placed upon experience carries with it the hedo- 
nistic interpretation of good and evil found in Hobbes. But 
Locke opposes alike Hobbes' political intervention as moral obli- 



147 The difficulty of Locke's undertaking is manifest. How can 
powers of mind be measured except by the very powers themselves? 
The fallacy lies in the abstraction of one element in the idea of knowl- 
edge and idealizing it as a standard by which all other elements are sub- 
ordinated, or condemned. 

The difficulty is not transcended: the standard has not been deter- 
mined, and cannot be adequately determined by using the powers to be 
measured as standards, or by the abstraction of one of them to degrade 
the others. The interconnection of the powers is so complete that it 
is impossible to abstract one without destroying the identity of all, or 
rather their true nature. "To see around our knowledge and find its 
boundary, we must stand outside of it, and where is such standing ground 
to be found?" This is not a denial of the possibility of criticising parts 
of our knowledge. It is sound judgment to criticise an idea because of 
failure to consider in its formation factors whose omission destroy its 
relation to the whole, or ipso facto, its truth. Of course in so doing the 
implication is inherent that there is a consciousness of truth which in 
being thus used serves as standard. 

What is denied is the possibility of completely validating the tools of 
knowledge, or of criticising adequately the idea of k owleig itself. 



lieview of Conception of the Standard 89 

gation, and that shifting of a moral standard determined by 
society's praise and blame. There is anticipation of Shaftesbury 
in the idea of universal benevolence. But with Locke this inherent 
harmony of individual, and orderly, organized, social life is 
referred to conformity with Divine .Will. Locke's belief in the 
permanence and universality of moral truths is shown in the 
following : " The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, 
goodness, and wisdom, whose workmanship we are and upon 
which we depend, and the idea of ourselves as understanding, 
rational beings, being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, 
if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our 
duty and rules of action, as might place morality among the 
sciences capable of demonstration, wherein I doubt not, but from 
self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences as incon- 
testible as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong 
might be made out." 

In place of the pantheism found often in the continental schools, 
the English conception has been that of God, the lawgiver, the 
ruler, with nature as his dominion. This Stoic-Scholastic idea 
is strongly supported by Locke's younger contemporary, Newton. 
Laws to him were the expression of infinite goodness and power. 
Lesser laws classified under greater laws suggested a pyramid — 
with the apex one law, the expression or manifestation of one 
lawgiver. Kepler's classic saying that in the discovery of laws 
of nature, we think the thoughts of God after Him, is a summary 
of Newton's view. 

Berkeley's Principle of Universal Mind 

Berkeley, following Descartes and Locke, interprets the idea of 
matter according to a new principle. All existence necessarily 
implies mind: the so-called laws of nature are ideas of the Uni- 
versal mind, — the so-called external objects, " things as they are," 
are the signs and symbols by which these ideas are communicable 
to man's mind. The " sense ideas " are man's consciousness of 
participation in the ideas of God. " Instead therefore of fate or 
necessity, or matter, or the unknown, a living, active mind is 
looked upon as the center and spring of the universe." Man's 
struggle then in all experience is to bring his human conceptions 
into harmony with the Divine Archetypes. 



<po The Concept Standard 

With such a conception it is hard to understand a segregation 
of any part of experience as ethical, and it may be that Berkeley's 
deductions of so-called moral rules from the intention of God 
to promote the general happiness, may be translating his general 
standard into terms of the contemporary moral theorists. 

The synthesis of subject and object as conceived by Berkeley 
under the idea that no object can exist apart from mind, is 
thought by some to be an English empiricism forerunning the 
German Kantian school. 

Reaction to Hobbes' Theory of Complete Egoism 

The influence of Hobbes' theory of egoism was indirectly the 
source of the attempt of Shaftesbury, Butler, Hutcheson, and 
others to identify private and public good. Shaftesbury made 
intelligent self-regard identical with social good. The personal 
sanction, which he termed the " moral sense," was criticised and 
developed by Butler into conscience which became at once a 
rival standard to self-love. Butler attempted to recognize the 
imperativeness of conscience independent of religious proof. He 
showed that man's primary impulses cannot all be egoistic, some 
of these being as obviously social as others are self-regarding, 
and also that man cannot be consistently egoistic without being 
self-regulative. If the impulses are thus regulated, the natural 
claim of conscience to be supreme ruler must be conceded. 

Hutcheson, while sustaining Butler's idea of the governing 
power of the " moral sense," maintains Shaftesbury's harmony 
of private and public good, but emphasises the disinterestedness 
of benevolent affections.^ He denies, with clear argument, the 
presence of the motive of " intrinsic reward " in the actions of 
the benevolent man. He points to the universal admiration man- 
kind has evinced for self-sacrifice as testimony to its being some- 
thing different from " refined self-seeking." In the practical 
working out of his system into control of outward acts, Hutcheson 
used the scholastic distinction between " material " and " formal " 
goodness. " An action is materially good when in fact it tends to 
the interest of the system, so far as we can judge of its tendency, 
or to the good of some part consistent with that of the system, 
whatever were the affections of the agent. An action is formally 
good when it flowed from ' good affection in a just proportion.' " 



Review of Conception of the Standard 91 

Hume's Denial of a Unifying Principle 

Hume in continuing the Lockian analysis of the limits of our 
knowledge transformed the latter into a philosophy of skepticism. 
There is no unifying principle by which experiences are inter- 
preted. The only synthesis Hume concedes is that ascribed to 
habit. A recurrence of associated phenomena leads us through 
memory of these to feel the necessity of one on the appearance 
of the other. The description is the purely psychological one of 
the Associational School. It is difficult to conceive of Hume's 
analysis as an explanation. It is essentially descriptive, and that 
only of routine rather than of reflection. Hume's description 
of the synthesis necessary to all cognition as merely the accidental 
result of external relations discoverable as impressions in our 
conscious experience, leaves all consideration of a standard out 
of the question. That Hume was conscious at once of the need 
of a synthesising principle and of the impossibility of a logical 
conception of such a principle in his theory is shown by the fol- 
lowing : 

" If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only 
by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct 
existences are ever discoverable by human understanding. We 
only feel a connexion or determination of the thought or pass 
from one object to another. It follows, therefore, that the 
thought alone feels personal identity, and when reflecting on the 
train of past perceptions that compose a mind, the ideas of them 
are felt to be connected together and naturally introduce each 
other. 

" However extraordinary this conclusion may seem, it need not 
surprise us. Modern philosophers seem inclined to think that 
personal identity arises from consciousness, and consciousness is 
nothing but a reflected thought or perception. The present philos- 
ophy therefore has a promising aspect. But all my hopes vanish 
when I come to explain the principles that unite our successive 
perceptions in our thought to consciousness. I cannot discover 
any theory which gives me satisfaction on this head. . . . 

" In short there are two principles which I cannot render con- 
sistent nor is it in my power to renounce either of them ; viz., 
that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that 
the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct 



92 The Concept Standard 

existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple 
or individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion 
between them, there would be no difficulty in the case." 148 

Hume has herein stated the crux in the theory known as 
Empiricism. It is conceded that his is the consistent exposition 
of the fundamental presupposition of that theory — that the 
theory of knowledge is identical with the problems of Associa- 
tional Psychology. It is conceded too that there has been no 
advance from Hume's position even in John Stuart Mill's 
" Logic." In Hume's closing sentence above he seems to rest 
his case : that with his theory he can not consistently offer an 
explanation of cognition. The value of Hume's analysis is only 
increased by the confession of its insufficiency. As is true always 
of masterful, scholarly work, it is a contribution to the world's 
knowledge even though its results are negative in the particular 
direction which the author has given them. It clears the field 
for further inquiry and provokes and stimulates like critical work 
in others. That this is especially true of Hume we know from 
Kant's own words. 149 In reading Hume, the stimuli to Kant's 
" Critique " are readily to be detected. Hume's attempt to account 
for any synthesising mode of experiencing is couched repeatedly 
in the words, " manner of conceiving." In the recurrence of this 
phrase, Kant's categories are implied. The last statement in the 
quotation from Hume suggests the scheme to frame the theory 
of knowledge that Kant actually took. 

Hume's ethical theory is a necessary deduction from his theory 
of knowledge. It is an analysis of distinct cases that excite appro- 
bation or disapprobation in a disinterested spectator of an action. 
Adam Smith's test is that of Hume: so act that a disinterested 
spectator will approve of your action. In his later treatise Hume 
recognizes no obligation to virtue except the agent's interest or 
happiness. In his earlier treatise he states that in some cases by 
" association of ideas " the rule by which we praise or blame is 
extended beyond the principle of utility from which it arises, 
but in his later treatise, " Inquiry into the Principles of Morals," 
he returns to the more strictly utilitarian view. 



148 Appendix to the Treatise on Human Nature, II, P. 551. 

149 It was Hume who awoke me, etc. *i 



Review of Conception of the Standard 93 

Reactionary Schools 

In the extremes represented by Hume and Shaftesbury, there 
is a manifest attempt to dissolve ethics in psychological hypo- 
theses. Shaftesbury's theory views the " moral sense," which is 
the efficient cause of action in his theory, as varying in different 
individuals. Hume's theory acknowledges no standard for action 
except the evanescent one of the approbation or disapprobation 
of a changing public. Both alike produce a disintegrating effect 
upon society. This is evident in the two reactionary schools that 
follow inevitably such crises : the one devoted to the strengthening 
of standards commonly accepted by " most men " ; the other 
devoted to the repudiation of these and to the development of the 
strongest common element in the new theory into an ultimate end 
or standard. The former was the still existent Intuitional School 
represented by Price, Reid, Stewart, and others ; the latter 
developed into Utilitarianism represented at first by Paley and 
Bentham, and afterwards by Mill. 

Section VII 

Kantian Analysis of Experience: Reciprocal Influence 
of This Conception and the Moral Standard 

Kant makes thought the prius of experience, and so of all 
existences that are objects of knowledge. Thought not only 
constitutes finite experience, but reaches beyond it, in that it is 
conscious of its own limitations. 150 This consciousness of the 
insufficiency of experience is the telcsis that is manifested in 
experience by man's continual striving to reach an ideal. 

Kant concedes Hume's position that evidence is lacking in the 
actual objects of experience of the unity or identity that thought 
demands. " Combination," says Kant, " is not in things and 
cannot be derived from them by perception, for example, and 
thence first transferred to the understanding; it is the work of 
the understanding alone, which itself is nothing more than the 
faculty of a priori combination, the faculty by which the variety 
of given representations is brought under the unity of apper- 
ception. This principle is the highest of human knowledge. Since 
now all possible perception depends on the synthesis of appre- 



150 This recalls Descartes. 



94 The Concept Standard 

hension and since this empirical synthesis again depends upon 
the transcendental synthesis, and hence on the categories, it 
follows that all possible perceptions, and hence everything that 
can exist in the empirical consciousness, i.e., all phenomena of 
nature, are subject in what respects their combination, to the 
categories which are the original ground of the necessary con- 
formity of nature (considered simply as such) to law." 151 

The categories then are the conditions of thought upon which 
all experience depends. The categories belong exclusively to the 
subject which by these modes of synthesising shapes the sensa- 
tions and so generates phenomena which become ideas. These 
ideas in turn become means of control. Hume's interpretation as 
" manner of conceiving " becomes Kant's " mode of experienc- 
ing." Kant's selection of a definite number of these modes of 
synthesising and designating them as the categories cannot fail 
to impress us as arbitrary or dogmatic. The essential truth of 
Kant's analysis is that unity of consciousness and its identity 
with itself are the necessary conditions for the combining of a 
given content into any conceivable form of experience. 

The only world we can know is the world determined by mind. 
The world of experience is therefore transcendently ideal. It 
is only empirically real ; its reality is only phenomenal. Kant has 
sometimes been wrongly interpreted as supporting an idealism 
which would involve the " negation of things in themselves beyond 
phenomena, or the identification of the objects of experience with 
these things." Kant is concerned with the world we know, the 
world of experience, the only reality we can know, though not 
the absolute reality, ding-an-sich. 

It is difficult to follow him in the Dialectic where he has to 
account for the fact that the conscious subject is able to so far 
transcend his experience as to contrast (as in the last statement) 
the objects of his experience as phenomenal, with things in them- 
selves. He shows that the expression of the subject through the 
categories is not the pure expression of its real nature, but only 
the product of the relationing of that identity with the forms of 
time and space. On the other hand, the affections of the sensible 
subject can tell us nothing of the unknown thing-in-itself that 
causes the affections. Thus experiencing on both sides is phe- 
nomenal — both in relation to the noumenal subject and noumenal 

161 Ueberweg, P. 1 70. See criticism in note same page. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 95 

object. These " lurk behind the veil and send forth into experi- 
ence on the one side affections which become objects through their 
determination by the unity of thoughts, and on the other side an 
identity of thought which becomes self-conscious in relation to 
the objects so determined by itself." 152 If the phenomena are 
regarded as unreal, there must be an idea of reality by which they 
are so judged. In other words, they are not condemned because 
they are ideal but because they are imperfectly ideal. The nou- 
menon is substituted for the thing-in-itself in the dialectic, and 
is defined by Kant as the object as it exists for an intuitive or 
perceptive understanding, i.e., for an understanding that does 
not synthetically combine the given matter of sense into objects 
by means of categories, but whose thought is one with the exis- 
tence of the objects it knows. 153 

This idea of the pure identity of knowing and being is self- 
originated by thought and leads us to regard our " empirical 
knoivledge as imperfect, and its objects as not, in an absolute 
sense real objects. The noumena are not therefore the unknown 
causes by whose action and reaction conscious experience is 
produced ; they represent a unity of thought with itself to which 
it finds experience inadequate." This higher unity of thought 
with itself Kant calls reason. In his identification of reason with 
the faculty of syllogizing, there is an echo of Aristotle's dis- 
cussion of the characteristic function of man. 

In the three fields, psychology, cosmology, and theology, Kant 
finds the empirical process of knowledge guided and stimulated 
by an idea it is unable to realize or verify. In psychology it is 
the identity of the self, in cosmology, the idea of totality — the 
world as a completed infinite whole, and in theology, the unity 
of identity and totality — " the unity of all things with each other 
and with the mind that knows them." These ideas do not exist 
independently of the mind that conceives them, but they exist in 
their function of keeping " open a vacant place beyond experience. 
. . . They are like dark lanterns which cast light upon the 
empirical world and show what are its boundaries, but leave 
their own nature in obscurity." 

Interpreted in the field of conduct, Kant's " idea of an intel- 
ligible world is a point of view beyond the phenomenal which 



162 Edward Caird's Criticism of Kant. 

163 Compare Thomas Aquinas. 



g6 The Concept Standard 

the reason sees itself compelled to take up, in order to think of 
itself as practical." Beings morally free, that is, self-determined, 
presuppose an idea of causality which with other ideas begins to 
fill the blank space beyond the phenomenal. The moral law pre- 
supposes freedom. Man in the sphere of conduct must recognize 
himself as the " denizen of a spiritual world where nothing is 
determined for him from without which is not simply the expres- 
sion of his own self-determination from within." " Thus," says 
Kant, " we have found what Aristotle could not find, a fixed 
point on which Reason can set its lever, not in any present or 
future world, but in its own inner idea of freedom — a point fixed 
for it by the immovable moral law, as a secure basis from which 
it can move the human will, even against the opposition of all 
the powers of nature." 

The universal law, the " categorical imperative," finds content 
in the two formulae : " Act so that the maxim of thy action may 
serve as a general rule," and " So act as to treat humanity 
whether in thine own person, or in that of any other, in every 
case as an end withal, never as a means only." In this conception 
of a " kingdom of ends," the principle of personality finds one 
of the highest forms of expression in history. In such a " king- 
dom " there is necessarily implied an organic unity toward the 
realization of which each contributes by virtue of his individuality, 
his unique share. 

There is thus a threefold development of the moral conscious- 
ness : 

i. Act as if the motive were to become a universal one. 

2. Treat personality as an end in itself. 

3. Further an organization of a kingdom of ends. 

Virtue, which is the satisfaction of reason, is the supreme 
good. Happiness is the satisfaction of man's sense nature. Hap- 
piness and virtue tend to approach each other. The union of the 
two becomes a moral necessity, an ideal. The moral conscious- 
ness authorizes the use of the idea of organic unity to interpret 
the phenomenal world; in other words, to serve as an ideal to 
give meaning to all experience. The consciousness of the beau- 
tiful and sublime represented by Kant's " Critique of Judgment " 
as disinterested, free, immediate, suggests essential harmony 
between the understanding and sense. In Kant's philosophy of 
religion, the idea of God is evolved from the moral consciousness, 



Review of Conception of the Standard 97 

and becomes the means of reconciling the two worlds of sense 
and intelligence. The God of Rationalism is invoked instead of 
the God of Revelation. 

Thus as soon as Kant applies his theory to the field of conduct, 
the duality disappears. When he directs that ideas evolved in 
the realm of reason be used as standards for the world of experi- 
ence, he virtually recognizes an identity in difference in the two 
worlds. How otherwise could the ideas be used to measure or 
synthesize or interpret experience, if these ideas were absolutely 
incommensurable with that experience? 

Hegel's Conception of a Self -differentiating Unity 

In Hegel's development of Kant's philosophy is the beginning 
of the modern tendency to identify morality with socialty. Hegel 
developes the positive character of the will as interpreted by Kant, 
to the conception that will is not will until it is objectified. By 
giving this idea historical breadth, the Hegelian conception of 
social institutions as the objectified general will or morality of 
the race is reached. The external world is regarded as the neces- 
sary manifestation of spirit through which it realizes itself. Mind, 
or Spirit as Hegel calls it, is a self-differentiating unity. The 
Absolute in its self-alienation in the finite constitutes what is 
termed Nature. The Idea as Being, is Nature. The return of 
its own alterity to itself, is Spirit. Spirit is the being-with-self 
of the Absolute Idea after its existence in its own otherness in 
Nature. The gradual advance to the final reconciliation is its 
becoming in time, its development towards freedom. Freedom 
arises from the ashes of the old activity, and is identical with 
the truth of the new activity. Hegel gives content to this con- 
ception in his interpretation of history in all its aspects. HiB 
whole philosophy is one of the evolution from lower to higher 
manifestations of the all-pervading Idea. These progressive 
manifestations are the momenta in the return of the self-differ- 
entiating Idea to itself. The goal is absence of self-determination. 
This cessation of determination of the Idea into Being is Absolute 
Freedom. The unity of willing and thinking is the activity of 
this force of self-determining freedom working toward its goal. 
The ethical is the recognition of ends of universal, rational scope, 
and the active furthering of these ends. 



98 The Concept Standard 

Thus the ideal is the reconciliation of differentiation with its 
essence, unity. The standard of all activity is this conception 
of the return of the Idea to itself, the reconciliation of nature 
and spirit ; the necessary relation of all things to one another and 
to the mind that knows them, the identity in difference of all 
existence, the universal principle of nature and humanity, whose 
essence is Spirit — an active self-determining principle. The 
principle is not an abstract one, but one that both within and 
without is necessarily realizing itself. It is the consciousness of 
this identity of the necessity that pre-conditions our activity with 
the manifestation within us of the spirit that makes us free, that 
constitutes morality in the Hegelian sense. 

Section VIII 

A Re-survey of the Effect of German Idealism on the 
Materialistic Conception of the Standard 

Whether formulated as in ancient times by Democritus 154 and 
later by Lucretius, or present as a tendency more or less pro- 
nounced in the English school of Bacon, Locke, Hobbes, and 
Hume the main principles of materialism can be summed up as 
follows: "the eternity and indestructibility of atoms, — nothing 
produces nothing: the eternity of motion, and the infinite pos- 
sibility of its combination, the iron sway of necessary laws 
throughout the universe: the rejection of final causes: the prin- 
ciples of spontaneous generation, and of natural selection at least 
in germ." 

German idealism from Kant through Fichte and Schelling to 
Hegel had opposed to this the conception that all the truths of 
science are but the phenomenal form of an inner determining 
principle : that consequently none of the particulars can be com- 
prehended except as determined in their significance to a pur- 
poseful connected whole of life. " The dutifully bound seeming 
universe of our experience will obey the law of the inner life 
whose thought it is." The German school therefore in its begin- 
nings was essentially critical. Kant's motive was an attempt 
to synthesize the two prevailing modes of thought, dogmatism 
and skepticism. 



154 Tyndall in his Belfast address suggests as a final conclusion of modern 
thought, the doctrines of Democritus. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 99 

The skeptic accused the dogmatist of employing ideas as means 
of arriving at general truth without adequate test of the means. 
He consequently denied both the possibility of truth, and the 
value of the tools. Mutual accusations resulted in fruitless 
affirmation and denial. The critiques of Kant were intended to 
validate the tools by a systematic investigation of the method 
of arriving at results. 

A re-survey reveals the fact that the exaggerated spiritualism 
of the Cartesians gave birth to the empiricism of Locke : this 
to the skepticism of Hume; to confute Hume, Kant wrote his 
" Critique of Pure Reason," to counteract the inherent disintegra- 
ting influences of the extreme individualism of the last mentioned, 
his " Critique of Practical Reason " : the trancendentalism there 
developed, Fichte translated into Subjective Idealism in which 
" life was a dream and he himself the dream of a dream," until 
the idea became with Hegel, a conception requiring a new logic, 
involving the denial of the principle of contradiction, and the 
substitution of the movement of negation and absorption of the 
premises. 155 

The logic of Hegel regards the operations of the understanding 
alone as impotent to achieve any real synthesis, and tending to 
degenerate into dogmatism, religious and scientific. The first 
work of the reason termed dialectic, he considers as centrifugal 
and radical, and when combined with an attitude toward the 
products of the understanding as ultimate or final, producing the 
attitude known as skepticism. The third stage, the inclusion of 
negatives, the total grasp of the speculative notion, comprehends 
in its " identity in difference " both skepticism and dogmatism. 

Thus by carrying this conception into the history of philosophy, 
opposing systems of philosophy previously considered as mutually 
destructive of each other become the necessary stages or elements 
of a conscious unity embracing both. 

Reactionary Influence of the Nineteenth Century Thought 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a reaction to the 
high tension of that speculative philosophy that found its most 
comprehensive expression in Hegel, closed the philosophic era. 
The exaltation of matter, beginning with Descartes, with each 



165 The Logic of Hegel. Prolog. Chap. XIII. 



ioo The Concept Standard 

returning wave in the rhythm of spiritual and material emphasis 
gathered force and became a purely mechanical conception of the 
universe. The nineteenth century becomes thereby seemingly 
the beginning of a new cycle of thought. The old cycle beginning 
with the animistic conception of the universe had given way at 
length to the new cycle with its correspondingly initial conception 
of world's forces. Science occupied the center of world interests, 
and acting with the individualistic tendency of the Protestant 
Revolt supplanted interest in universals. The discovery of the 
world's forces stimulated unprecedented progress in the economic 
and industrial control of these. The Weltgeist of the time was 
busy with concrete reality, concrete having come to stand for 
matter, reality being another name for the material thing. The 
simplicity of the appeal that is made by science, to the perception 
and imagination, has a certain clearness and definiteness appar- 
ently verifiable 156 in experience. Hypotheses become theories, 
theories become principles when they are verifiable in experience. 
The goal is the mathematical formulation of experience. 

Romanticism was another influence. Aside from the effect it 
exerted upon the systems of philosophy in Germany, making pos- 
sible the highly speculative character of these, the emphasis it 
gave nature was one influence in paving the way for the recog- 
nition of the natural as a general standard for measuring the 
value of every particular event or experience. The interpretation 
of the natural was wholly materialistic. 

Paralleling this tendency to reduce all this experience to a 
mathematical calculus, has been the increasing divergence of 
science and religion. Science has come to mean the store of 
knowledge gained through sense experience alone. The most 
comprehensive hypothesis explaining the facts of science has been 
the modern conception of evolution. It may be defined as " a 
natural history of the cosmos including organic being expressed 
in physical terms as a mechanical process." 

Herbert Spencer's Theory 

Herbert Spencer has done more than any one else towards the 
formation of a philosophy of evolution on a scientific basis. His 
celebrated formula that " Evolution is an integration of matter 



The possibility of this is challenged. 



Review of Conception of the Standard 101 

and a concomitant dissipation of motion, during which matter 
passes from a relatively coherent heterogenity : and during which 
the contained motion undergoes a parallel transformation " — this 
formula while implying an ascending process gives no hint of 
the nature of any inherent determination in favor of variation in 
the higher direction. Darwin found no better epithet for the 
variation through which transformations are wrought than " for- 
tuitous " and his staunchest disciples assert that if such varia- 
tions be predetermined toward certain results, there is an end of 
Darwinism. It seems difficult to understand this ignoring of an 
initial force so characteristic of many enthusiastic followers of 
Darwin. These 157 too often recklessly claim what Darwin most 
humbly disclaims. " He implies that my views explain the uni- 
verse, but it is a most monstrous exaggeration. The more one 
thinks the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignor- 
ance. If we consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to 
look at it as the outcome of chance. The whole question seems to 
be insoluble." 158 

Spencer's optimistic belief in the eventual complete adjustment 
or adaptation of man to the condition of his environment furnishes 
a principle of conduct : man should so act as to further progress 
toward that ideal. Morality consists of an observance of laws 
of life, both individual and collective. There is a strong tincture 
in Spencer's optimism of the eighteenth century idea of beneficent 
nature, — of nature as a great law-abiding force : a vice-regent 
of God that effects the happiness of those that conform to its 
beneficent laws. Spencer's conception of an earthly goal of " the 
greatest length, breadth, and completeness of life " when conduct 
simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in 
offspring, and in fellow men " where every voluntary act would 
be conducive to the harmony of all — such a conception is not only 
Utopian but destructive as well to the fundamental principle 
upon which his philosophy rests — evolution. The process has 
transcended the condition of its existence, the need of adaptation 
of the individual to the environment. 



157 Haeckel quoting Kant's statement: "It is absurd for a man even 
to conceive the idea that some day a Newton will arise who can explain 
the origin of a single blade of grass by natural laws uncontrolled by 
design," makes the statement that the impossible Newton appeared 
in the person of Chas. Darwin. 

158 Quoted in "The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer," Gerard, P. 150. 



102 The Concept Standard 

The subjective standard of pleasurable feeling, involving the 
calculus of pleasure and pain, in its ultimate analysis is open 
to all the criticism of the Utilitarian standard of happiness. This 
is most plainly seen in comparing Mill's statement that if life 
had any value at all, happiness was its one end — " the test of all 
conduct " — with the subsequent statement that this end was to 
be attained " by fixing the mind on some object other than one's 
own happiness, on the happiness of others, the improvement of 
mankind." Instead of happiness for a standard there results a 
standard for happiness. By substituting " common good " for 
" general happiness," the standard is not defined : it is not dif- 
ferentiated from pleasure in the manifold. This principle of 
valuation as analyzed by its most famous advocate, J. S. Mill, 
results in an antithesis to the premises, viz., that the highest 
virtue that can be found in man is the sacrifice of his happiness. 

If social happiness is to be a test of morals, it must postulate 
a personal happiness of some hitherto unexplained kind. The 
negative condition of happiness — the ideal of social health — 
conditions allowing each to act as he desires, interpreted means 
only that by state or other mutually recognized power conditions 
should be fixed so that individuals may proceed by agreement to 
express and secure their own activities. May it not be that such 
a foundation guarantees individual license, that such a pedestal 
supports " either an Athene or a Priapus " ? 

Thus in the synthetic philosophy of Spencer, there is no clue 
to the nature of the implied ascending tendency in transformism. 
Progress remains unexplained. At the same time the distinctively 
mechanical interpretation is not unreservedly admitted. An 
unknowable reality, according to Spencer, manifests itself alike 
in the material and mental domain. This suppositious unknowable 
is sometimes termed force, the term itself revealing the materi- 
alistic nature of the conception. There is no adequate meta- 
physical interpretation of the principle of control, no standard 
recognised as determining values. There is an essentially dua- 
listic basis, however, evident throughout the system. 

These conclusions are forced on the reader in attempting to 
discover any full explanation of inorganic evolution. The con- 
flict of integrating and disintegrating forces is not a solution, but 
a description of an imaginary process. There is confessedly no 
attempt to account for the first appearance of life, or later on 
of mental life, no reason is found for the manifestation of the 



Review of Conception of the Standard 103 

unknowable in time, nor for its manifestation in a material world 
before it appears as mind or consciousness. Nor does the theory 
that innate intuitions are a racial inheritance explain their presence 
in the most remote antecedent. The a priori element in mental 
activity is not thereby accounted for. 

Finally, his principle applied in the ethical field is contradictory 
in its two standards: the subjective one of a calculus of pleas- 
urable feelings, and the objective one of fullness of life for all. 
The contribution to previous Utilitarianism of this biological 
thesis that development has brought about harmony between pleas- 
ure and progress, not only fails to solve the Utilitarian difficulty 
of reconciling individual interests and social good, but the thesis 
is itself challenged by other evolutionists, notably Huxley. Its 
failure to solve the difficulty is in the fact that the necessary con- 
ditions of progress imply a lack of the asserted harmony. On 
the other hand, Huxley denies vigorously the harmony of the 
cosmic and ethical process. The principle of the survival of the 
fittest does not at all imply the survival of the ethically best. 
Huxley would find the ethical standard in the moral ideals of 
men, " Its principle is not that of survival of the fittest but that 
of fitting as many as possible to survive. The duty of man is 
not to conform to the cosmic process, but to combat it." 

Thomas H. Green's Theory — Neo '-Hegelian 

One of the strongest opponents of the conception of the universe 
as a purely mechanical process, is T. H. Green. He might be 
termed a Neo-Hegelian in his fundamental assumption, which 
identifies the self — " the single, active, self-conscious principle 
with the universal or divine self-consciousness, the one eternal, 
divine subject to which the universe is relative. Hence conscious- 
ness has a double character, unity and manifold : as a unity it is 
eternal, all-conditioning, an end realizing itself in and through 
the manifold; as manifold it is subject to change, conditioned, and 
is a means to an end. The eternal consciousness is manifested 
in the individual in the forecasting idea." " In virtue of this 
definite principle in him, man has definite capabilities the realiza- 
tion of which, since in it alone can he satisfy himself, forms his 
true good." 159 The idea of a possible better state of himself, 



Green, P'-ologomena of Ethics. 



104 The Concept Standard 

consisting in a further realization of his capabilities, has been the 
moralizing agent in human life : it has yielded our moral stan- 
dards, loyalty to which, itself a product of the same idea, is the 
condition of goodness in the individual." 160 

The application of the principle to the interpretation of natural 
phenomena is explained as the " consciousness of possibilities in 
ourselves unrealized but constantly in process of realization that 
alone enables us to read the idea of development into what we 
observe of natural life and to conceive that there must be such 
a thing as a plan of the world." Although viewing the ultimate 
standard of worth as personal worth, in which all other values are 
relative to value for, of, or in a person, the common or social good 
is conceived as altogether in harmony. " Society could not exist 
without this recognition of each individual as an end in himself : 
Persons are interested in each other as persons in so far as each, 
being aware that another presents his own self-satisfaction to 
himself as an object, finds satisfaction for himself in procuring or 
witnessing the self-satisfaction of the other." 

This consciousness of a possible better state of himself as abso- 
lutely desirable, will yield a recognition of rules requiring some- 
thing to be done regardless of inclination. " It is a consciousness 
of the possibility of an action in which no desire shall be gratified 
but the desire excited by the idea of the act itself, as of something 
absolutely desirable in the sense that in it the man does the best 
that is in him to do." 

The resemblance of Green's principle to the Categorical Impera- 
tive is readily seen. The particular duties which it enjoins will 
include at least those that in the hitherto experience of men have 
made for progress in the fulfilment of men's capabilities. 

But Green denies emphatically the contention of contempo- 
raneous evolutionary theorists, that this principle even as mani- 
fested in the lower level of civilization is evolved from or is a 
product of feeling of animal origin. " Unless the fragmentary 
indications obtainable of a primitive humanity can be interpreted 
as expressing a consciousness in germ or principle the same as 
ours, we have no clue to their significance at all." 161 



160 Ibid, Compare Royce, Philosophy of Loyalty, 1908. ~*^ 

161 Green, Prologomena of Ethics, Page 211. Green's expositiorTis 
given in his own words as far as the limits of the paper allow. 



Review of Conception of the Standard IO t 

At the same time Green concedes without question the inter- 
dependence in manifestations of his principle, of the idea and 
the purely animal feelings. As an example of this is cited man's 
provision for the wants of his family. This must have rested 
upon the projection of himself in thought into the future, as the 
subject of a possibly permanent satisfaction to be formed in the 
satisfaction of the wants of the family with which he identifies 
himself. " This power of coming to be what he is not through 
a society in which he lives a permanent life, is in promise and 
potency an interest in the bettering of mankind, in the realization 
of its capabilities or the fulfilment of its vocation conceived as an 
absolutely desirable end." The idea of the good according to 
this view is an idea that gradually creates its own filling : 162 
the idea must have place before the authority of the law or custom 
can have any meaning for the individual. 

The gradual spiritualization of the idea of true good exhibits 
itself in the accepted standards of virtue and in the duties which 
the candid conscience recognizes. 

The real value of virtue according to this theory arises from 
a clear conception of the end to which it is directed as a character 
not a good fortune, as a fulfilment of human capabilities from 
within, as a function not a possession. " Thus both the practice 
of virtue and the current standard of virtue, which on the one 
hand presupposes the practice and on the other hand reacts and 
sustains it, have a history corresponding to the gradual develop- 
ment and determination of the idea of what social good consists 
in." 

Shortcomings arise from the impossibility of envisaging or 
of exhaustively defining the good which it presupposes, insepa- 
rable from the very nature of morality, as an effort not an attain- 
ment, a progressive construction of what should be, not an 
enjoyment of what is, governed not by sight but by faith. 



Ibid. Page 259. 



CHAPTER IV 



Section I 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises : Influence 
upon Educational Systems 

The Chinese cycle of development bridges the crises on which 
other civilizations wrecked, by a titanic grasp of its social tenden- 
cies. This wresting from all its preceding civilization of elements 
making for social stability, and conserving them in a national 
classic, was an unique instance in history. The decision that 
this selected content was to remain intact was forced as final, 
and a system of education was devised that would make deviation 
from this standard impossible. Social progress was sacrificed 
to social stability. Four thousand years of continued existence 
as a nation where all values were determined by an unchanging 
standard has revealed to modern students the adequacy of an 
educational system for the perpetuation of a definitely conceived 
plan of national life. 

It also affords a study of the influence of a purely secular stand- 
ard. Confucianism contains no reference to a deity or to a 
future life. It is an idealization of those forces which man's 
experience through centuries of trial had found contributing to 
social welfare. As such it bears close study in the light of modern 
effort to isolate and conserve those tendencies conceived by social 
engineers as the product of society's best expression. China 
affords an example of a fixed standard which, through an ordered 
system of examination excluding all possibility of re-interpretation 
or adaptation of that standard, has absolutely controlled the des- 
tinies of a many-million-souled nation for thousands of years. 1 

India 
In strikingly contrasted manner India through another cycle 
of development testifies to the same fact — a nation's tacit recog- 
nition of defeat to express itself on progressively higher levels. 
The crisis must have been reached after centuries of striving 



Recent developments in China are prophetic of general upheaval. 

106 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises 107 

when final recourse was made to the peace suggested by a philos- 
ophy of annihilation — of the individual's ultimate absorption 
into the one all-pervading principle of the universe. 

Both the Chinese and the Hindoo conceptions produce the inevi- 
table result, complete suppression of the individual. In the 
Chinese conception this is accomplished by completely ignoring 
the religious or spiritual in the universe, and in the Indian con- 
ception, by regarding man as but the transient mode of the Uni- 
versal Spirit. Consistently with his moral aim of absorption, 
extinction, endless felicity, the Hindoo educated for this end. 
His education began and ended with his philosophy of Quietism. 
This Quietism has effectively resisted all efforts of Europeans to 
arouse any endeavor for economic or social progress. 

In these oldest of civilizations, modern man may see partial 
manifestations at least of two plainly discernible tendencies of 
present-day civilization : one the minimizing almost to complete 
neglect of the spiritual needs of man by the modern sociologist ; 
the other the adoption of various forms of Eastern mysticism by 
those whose spiritual needs are demanding expression. This last 
carries with it disregard of scientific measures for the improve- 
ment of man's worldly condition. 

Greece 
The crisis in the Greek cycle of development led to the recog- 
nition of the individual's natural disposition, the constitution of 
his impulses, the so-called law of Nature, as the supreme law 
of action. This standard, deification of man's own powers, meas- 
ured all values in the Sophist's scheme of education. This spirit 
of Greek thought has its counterpart in the modern pragmatic 
school. " Protagoras again " is a criticism of this philosophy. 
Enough of the theory of Protagoras has been preserved to us 
to afford a distinct parallel. To offset the intrinsic individualism 
of the theory, Protagoras recognizes primary ethical feelings 
which impel men toward the formation of permanent unions for 
mutual preservation. Likewise in the modern theory man's essen- 
tially social nature is regarded as the basis for solidarity. The 
relativity of truth in both systems gives that flux of values that 
both to the conservative and to the idealistic reformer seem so 
disastrous to that social stability that is necessary to any perma- 
nent progress. 



108 The Concept Standard 

While the great theorists were endeavoring to put what had 
been custom morality upon a scientific basis, to give a rational 
sanction to what had been received unquestionably, Greece fell 
because her people had no standard but personal gratification. 
The Sophist teaching which had been supposed by certain writers 
to have hastened the downfall of Greece, was nothing but the 
expression of the conditions of the times — a response to the 
demand of the age. It seems incontrovertible that the theories of 
these self-constituted teachers of the Athenian youth challenged 
the genius of the Greek philosophers. It was only by accepting 
the thesis " man is the measure of all things " and pursuing it 
into all its implications, that Socrates was able theoretically to 
restore authority to the law, legal and ethical. 2 

The Stoic conception of law so firmly gripped the iron states- 
men of Republican Rome, that they were never able to give the 
sanction of public endorsement to a system of education. Greek 
teachers imbued with the ideas of the Sophist, so out of harmony 
with the Roman reverence for law, made education under them 
sufficiently undesirable as to preclude any National System of 
Education. From the vigorous protest of Cato to the well-known 
meditation of Marcus Aurelius, Roman history reveals the clash 
of underlying principles. The practical-minded Roman seemed 
to lack power to generate a national culture of his own to form 
the content of an educational system. His awe of the towering 
genius of Greece made him accept Greek ideas, and content him- 
self with providing a mode for the transference of these ideas. 
These modes or institutions are the channels through which Greek 
civilization reached succeeding ages, but the exotic ideas were 
never themselves naturalized. The conviction is forced that 
Roman genius should have developed its own mode of experi- 
encing life. The Stoic recognition of a law-abiding universe, 
and of man's potentiality to ascertain these laws should have 
led naturally to the search for these laws. In its stead, the 
genius of the Roman wasted itself, so far as its schools were 
concerned, in reducing Greek letters to law. 

2 For further development of this idea, see Windelband, History of 
Philosophy, P. 77. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises 109 

Early Christian Era 

The Christian Apologists reversed the attitude of the Roman, 
and seizing every available channel of communication in the form 
of existing philosophies and other institutions, used them for 
the transmission of the Christian ideal. This is most clearly 
seen in the Alexandrian Schools. Justin, Clement, and Origen 
illustrate it best. " We are permitted when we go out of Egypt 
to carry with us the riches of the Egyptians to adorn the taber- 
nacles." All the learning of the Greek, all the eloquence of the 
Roman were brought into the service of Christian instruction. 

That all pagan religions and philosophies of themselves were 
powerless to effect any moral improvement in the masses, had 
been abundantly demonstrated. That Aristotle was aware of this 
limitation is evident in the following: "Now if arguments and 
theories were able to make people good they would be entitled 
to receive high and great awards, and it is with theories that we 
would have to provide ourselves. But the truth apparently is 
that though they are strong enough to encourage and stimulate 
young men of liberal minds, though they are able to inspire with 
goodness a character that is naturally noble and sincerely loves 
the beautiful, they are incapable of converting the mass of men 
to goodness and beauty of character." 

The limitation of all philosophical attempts to furnish a moral 
sanction was that the conception reached could be grasped only 
by those innately noble. All such conceptions furnished no moral 
standard for the masses. Plato's theory necessitated a succession 
of sages who by power of intellect were fitted to determine the 
relations of the individual and society. 

It was the contribution of Christianity that a standard was 
furnished to all alike. The idea of love and charity, latent in all 
men, was called into active existence by the conception of a God- 
made man who had suffered death for the redemption of all 
mankind. His life and His teachings as embodied in that earthh' 
life furnished a standard intelligible to all the redeemed. 3 Its 
acceptance as the guide of life depended upon that free-will and 
its steersman the intellect the possession of which was man's like- 
ness to God. Through the doctrine of the soul endowed with 
understanding and free-will, the humblest grasped the essence of 



3 The theme of Browning's Saul is a most exalted expression of this 
thought. 



no The Concept Standard 

the idea reached by the Stoic philosopher : that man possessed 
within him a part of the divine that enabled him, if so he wilhd, 
to be in harmony with the eternal order of the universe. 4 

The Christian idea of grace prevented the deification of self 
that characterized the later Stoics. Man is free to act as he 
pleases — with or without the desire to put himself in harmony 
with the Divine Will. He is a free agent in any event. The 
Divine Will remains unchanged. On the one hand he may repudi- 
ate all need of help : on the other he may humbly seek Divine 
Grace to enlighten the intellect and to impel or reinforce the will. 
To the Christian there is no evil except that wrought by the 
alienation of the individual will from the Divine. The Creator 
has supplied, by means of revealed law, what He has left imper- 
fect in the means of discovering truth through unaided reason. 
Not that the ultimate impossibility of arriving at truth through 
reason is implied, but taking the bulk of mankind, there seems 
sufficient grounds for believing that without revelation they have 
not a sufficiently easy, sure, and universally available means of 
keeping constantly in mind how they stand related to life, death, 
and after death. Reason points to the likelihood of a revelation. 
Christ came to fulfil the law, hence the law of Moses contains 
potentially what the Sermon on the Mount reveals and interprets 
and transfigures by Divine Love. Go ye and teach all nations. 
There is no question of what to teach. History furnishes no 
parallel of the unbounded zeal of those possessed with the spirit 
to fulfil the Will of the Master. No motive has ever equalled 
the loftiness of this. It inspired the pinnacle of human achieve- 
ment in art. It belongs to the future to transcend it. 

Section II 
Supplementary Criticism and Interpretation 
" All that we know through experimentation and from observa- 
tion of the earliest material cell and the life that animates it is, 
not that they are one and the same thing, but that they are con- 
comitants ; all that can be said, through experience or observation, 
of the advanced material organisms and an advanced state of 

4 "* * * in order that man, himself created as we are told in the 
image of his Creator, might in a lesser degree, through the power working 
within him, become a creator also, might link his individuality with the 
Father individuality behind all things." North American Review, V. 
CXCVIII. P. 817. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises m 

life is, not that they are one and the same thing, but that they, 
too, are concomitants ; and all that can be said of man, from any 
standpoint of experience or observation, is that, with him, his 
physical and soul life are concomitants. But whether the con- 
comitancy of the material cell with the life that animates it, and 
the concomitancy of the physical body of man with the soul that 
inhabits it, are due to life having its origin in the cell, and the 
soul having its origin in the physical body, or whether life and 
soul are, in the last analysis, entities separate from the cell and 
body, — the real entities of the universe, utilizing these material 
forms as instruments only, as we utilize the telephone transmitter 
and receiver as instruments only, are, at most, deductions only, 
not facts scientifically established — deductions that any school 
of belief may either accept or reject zvitliout rejecting any part 
of the array of facts that actual observation and experience have 
established." 5 

Criticism and interpretation of the preceding chapters purposes 
to find in all the systems of philosophy the tacit recognition of a 
determining principle, a controlling essence. This recognition 
of the presence of such a principle is comparable to the developing 
consciousness of self in the individual. That which makes the 
individual what he is, is this self which may have acted for a 
space of years without having become conscious of its existence. 
Vague consciousness of the presence of a personality has accom- 
panied the use of /, me, my, mine, from infancy, but the realiza- 
tion of this personality as a controlling factor in all activity comes 
much later, and then with varying degrees of clearness in dif- 
ferent individuals. This consciousness of self as a thinking, 
willing, acting self is parallel to the recognition in humanity's 
span of existence of a controlling essence — that which shapes 
the destinies of the universe. The process becoming conscious 
of itself proves that there is that within it that transcends it. 
This immanent and transcendent essence is what we have viewed 
in the preceding chapters as the standard. 

The standard thus conceived is intelligible to man through the 
modes of its workings. Viewed through history there is dis- 
cernible through all the confusion of man's striving, a principle 
of reality, unfolding itself on constantly higher levels, in pro- 

6 A Layman's View. Peter S. Grosscup. North American Review, 1908. 
P. 814. 



i I2 The Concept Standard 

portion as man is active in seeking. The revealed Law of the 
Hebrew has within it implicit, what is progressively made explicit. 
The Divine essence of this revelation is manifest to succeeding 
generations in that it contained nothing that procrastinated the 
progress of the people to whom it was given. 

It may be claimed that this statement is an interpretation of 
pragmatism ; if so, it but confirms the position taken that the 
core of reality in man's historic experience has in embryo the 
truth necessary to man's continuous development. 

This conception of the standard is latent in Aristotle's theory 
that everything in the universe is striving for realization. This 
becoming is the process in which potentiality is transformed con- 
tinually into activity. From the lowest types of inorganic life 
through the vegetative and animal world, through the varying 
degrees of man's potentiality, this force is at work. Its highest 
manifestation is in man's rational life, its highest in speculative 
thinking. To the extent that reason enters into the control of 
sensible nature is there at once a manifestation and a promise 
of absorption or contemplation of Divine Life, immortality. The 
world of sense thereby becomes a law-revealing means of man's 
development. 

Thus in Jewish conceptions the standard is objectified by Reve- 
lation as Divine Law; in Plato it is the Idea of the Good, which 
in its differentiations or modes of functioning, forms the universe ; 
in Aristotle it is the Nature of all existences that is the telesis. 

The Stoic interpretation of the Laws of Nature as the mani- 
festation of the World-thought, together with the recognition of 
man, the microcosmos, as having within him the means of putting 
himself into harmony with the world order, needs no further 
elucidation to show its essential identity with the conceptions 
already advanced. As interpreted by Seneca, Epictetus, and 
Marcus Aurelius, its kinship is undisputed. 

The eclectic nature of the Alexandrian philosophy makes it 
easy to recognize in the different systems current during the 
Patristic age, the constant factors. In the philosophy of Justin, 
Clement, Iranaeus, and Origen, is most clearly seen that con- 
sciousness of a standard that has determined as truth the knowl- 
edge of the ancients. This as viewed by them is the Divine Logos. 
Revelation is the activity of the Logos, discernible as rationality 
in the entire race, as the Law of Moses among the Jewish people, 
and as the law of love and freedom through the Logos Incarnate. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises 113 

Things created are the ectypes, the outward expression of the 
ideas constituting the Divine Logos. The relation of this thought 
to Spinoza's theory is evident. The power that gives form to 
matter, that guides and controls the course of the universe is a 
manifestation of the Logos. As thus viewed, the Logos, as the 
God within the world, is the dwelling place of the God without 
the world. Add to this conception that of Plotinus that all that 
symbolizes in sensuous or material form the laws or reasons 
eternally active in the world has a right to rank as beautiful, and 
there results in essence a theory of the universe. 

In the philosophy of the patristic period, there is a strong 
infusion of Eastern philosophy that tends to give that pantheistic 
conception of the universe so destructive, when consistently 
developed, to human endeavor. 

Through Abelard's ethics of intention following upon John 
of Salisbury's desire to " find his way in the world in which man 
has to live," there is a meeting ground of Augustinian principles 
and of the essential principles of the English School of philoso- 
phers or psychologists. However, as has been stated, this iden- 
tification of the content of the moral law with the choice of 
Divine Will, requires alike in Plato, Aristotle, Origen, Augustine, 
John of Salisbury, and Abelard, sustenance from the Divine. This 
sustenance is essentially the same whether viewed as grace, illumi- 
nation, revelation, or enlightenment. This Divine Principle vari- 
ously conceived, is the ultimate standard. 

Reasons for the resuscitation of the controversy over uni- 
versal need not be restated. 6 Nor need there any longer be 
that attitude toward Mediaeval philosophy that has waved it 
aside as a thing of the past. The least attempt like a careful 
reading of these philosophers, forces a realization at once 
of the worth and soundness of many of the ideas advanced. There 
seems validity in the contention that conceding at once that " the 
soul " does not possess innate conceptions, and that its thinking 
rests in a basis of sensuous perceptions and of representative 
images, still the intellect has the unique function of abstracting 
forms from these representative images. Not altogether in the 
Platonic sense, but in a sense that does not challenge so severely 



See p. 57, Chap. III. 



ii 4 



The Concept Standard 



our acceptance, does the one in this theory, exist beside the many. 
In the elaboration of this theory, there seems to be at once a sum- 
mary of the persistent factors in previous theories, and at the 
same time an anticipation of emerging factors in succeeding 
theories. 7 The essence of the theory as it is directly related 
to the subject under discussion in this paper, is: The Nature 
of the intelligent is to grasp the intelligible. Intelligence is con- 
versant with natures which with relations are eternal. Because 
of the theory that God commands the Good because 
it is good, the ultimate standard of truth is at the same 
time the ultimate standard of the good. This theory conceives 
various ways of functioning of the Ultimate Standard of Divine 
Wisdom by which men are aided to the " progressive assimilation 
to God by the voluntary appropriation of his gifts." This is the 
purpose of life : this is man's Good. Good is understood therefore 
to mean that which satisfies man's needs and desires if these are 
only sufficiently enlightened. Though a medium is provided 
through the modes of functioning of the Logos, by which man 
can attain to his end, it is not assumed that man cannot through 
his reason arrive at the same conception as that revealed by God. 
The way of God in history would include all those spiritual pos- 
sessions of the race, preserved because owing to the degree of 
universality in them, consequently the degree of truth, they 
have accelerated the progress of mankind. Here would be included 
idea, will, judgment, conscience, in the individual ; and codes 
of conduct, commandments, authority, institutions, idealised types 
of men, laws of nature, the permanent works of art. 

It is in place to point out the inclusive nature of this theory. 
The teleology of Jewish revelation, the theory of the one beside 
the many, as a modification of Plato, the conception of develop- 
ment bridging the worlds of sense and spirit as Aristotelian, the 
recognition of an actuating principle of energy referred to the 
Divine essence paralleling Origen, the anticipation of Kant in the 
following: The reason why our understanding cannot understand 
many things together in one act is because in the act of under- 
standing, the mind becomes one with the object understood; 



7 See pp. 57 ff, Chap. III. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises ur 

and of Hegel in the progressive assimilation of man to God by 
the voluntary appropriation of his gifts, all are instances of the 
comprehensive nature of this philosophy. 

The Standard as a Way in History 
In this historical survey of what has constituted the controlling 
principle of man's activity, the attempt has been to give a sym- 
pathetic interpretation. This controlling principle, or standard 
determining values, has been variously conceived in the different 
ages. The study at hand has warranted the deduction that there 
have been constant factors or elements in the conceptions. These 
persistent constituents of the principle appear to be the result 
of the operation of selection. They seem to be man's seal of 
approval upon what has furthered his progress. Viewed in this 
light the question forces itself, Should not an individual, before 
he presumes to set his own standard, at least investigate those 
that have stood the test of ages? 

It is evident that social activities have been shaped by the ends 
or ideals dominating society. From the account given of these 
ideals or standards it remains to abstract those ideals that have 
been appropriated by succeeding civilization and have, by shaping 
the conduct of the invading barbarian tribes, survived into 
modern times. There seems to be insufficient warrant for the 
supposition that the life of these tribes before they encountered 
the ancient civilization had developed ideals that controlled to 
an appreciable extent their' life from that time on. "They 
furnished the practical strength with which to appropriate the 
contributions which the other peoples had exhausted themselves 
in making." s These contributions of antiquity had passed into 
the custody of the church. They were the spiritual possessions 
of most worth from the Israelitish, Greek, and Roman social life. 

Contribution from Israel 
The prophetic movement through Isaiah and Jeremiah had 
shown the possibility of worship of Jehovah freed from the limi- 
tations of special time, place, and form. This conception was 
necessary to hold the people together during their exile or dis- 
persion. The ethical impulse was freed. While the prophets 



Forrest, Development of Western Civilization, 1908. P. 



Ir 6 The Concept Standard 

emphasized the right disposition and stated the idea of One God 
in its essence, while the ethical impulse was freed by conceiving- 
it to be the spring to all action, it failed to provide means for 
the expression of the universal principle thus set forth. It gave 
no working formula for the guidance of life. 9 This had to be 
entrusted to the priestly class. These finding it necessary to 
embody the ideal of the prophets, so transformed the old religious 
habits that the priests became associated with the maintenance 
of peculiar relations with God. " Till then no one had dreamed 
of a fellowship of faith dis-associated from all national forms." 
" It was the first step in the emancipation of spiritual religion 
from the forms of political life." It was thus only that a single 
unified principle was asserted — the unity of all life in relation 
with God — in harmony with his will. 

But, although much of the old ceremonial was thus eliminated, 
still the conception remained that God manifested Himself in a 
particular way to the chosen people. This was evidently felt as 
a contradiction as there seems to have been held by their leaders 
a conviction that it was incumbent upon them to preserve the real 
values Israel had attained by the embodying ceremonial, until 
such a time as God should more fully manifest Himself. This 
last idea was satisfied in the prophecies of the Messiah. In 
Christ's teaching were reconciled the contribution of the prophets 
and that of the priests. " On the prophetic side Jesus held that 
the obedience to God was a state of the will and did not consist 
in external acts. If the moral life was not only within, but 
consisted in a willingness of the soul rather than an understand- 
ing, every individual could realize it. On the priestly side Jesus 
developed the conception of the Kingdom of Heaven, the com- 
munity within which the right attitude, faith, could find expres- 
sion. The truth underlying the priestly movement was that the 
moral motive must find expression. It was the social principle — 
the consciousness of the necessity of organic, institutional expres- 
sion of the moral impulse — for which the priestly movement had 
stood ; while the prophetic movement had stood for the principle 
of individuality. Jesus made the disposition in and through a 
universal society reciprocally necessary and thus gave an ulti- 
mate ethical statement." 10 



9 Forrest. Ibid. P. 18. 
r ~ 10 Dewey, unpublished lectures on the Evolution of Morality, quoted 
in the Development of Western Civilization. Forrest. P. 21. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises 



117 



The Contribution from Greece 

The highly imaginative Greeks in an early stage of their own 
life as a people appropriated the technical skill of the advanced 
civilizations with which they came in contact. The freeing of 
the technique from the cumbrous customs of the older civilizations 
was due to the fact that the sacredness of these latter had no 
meaning to the foreigner. Thus the progress of a people was 
" short-cutted " by adapting technical processes which were the 
product of ages of selection and elimination in the older civiliza- 
tions, to the expression of highly idealized concepts. " They 
formed the habit of separating meaning from existence and of 
finding reality in the meaning rather than the existence. With 
them every experience came to have an eternal value, a value last- 
ing after the experience had gone." This ability to see reality 
in the meaning resulted in the portrayal or execution of types 
as expressions of this meaning. It was thus that the Greeks 
chiseled ideals, and not particular existences. 

This presence of universality made the products of their skill, 
art. This tendency to objectify types is the basis of Plato's theory 
of ideas, which are really archetypes as they were called by later 
philosophers. 

Aristotle worked out from these conceptions of Plato a system 
of intellectual categories, which were used by later society as 
standards to measure life values. The adoption of the Aristotelian 
system by the church as an intellectual mode, is easily accounted 
for, when it is seen that through this method of Hellenic genius, 
Aristotle reached the idea of a soul of the universe — a rational 
logos. As Hebrew monotheism was ethical, the Greek mono- 
theism was intellectual, and supplied the lack in the former. Their 
coalescence formed the Christian doctrine. 

Thus the contribution of the Greek was one of intellect. " By 
generalizing experience and giving the generalization typical 
form, the Greeks made possible the conception of standards by 
which experience could be judged." " That which was abstracted 
in Greek thought was the end of all particular ends. They reached 
a conception of an absolute good — the idea of the good — that 
society as a whole was pursuing. Together with this idea was 
the parallel conception of a free reason, capable of knowing the 



11 Forrest, Development of Western Civilization. P. 52. 



n8 The Concept Standard 

end and realizing it. This abstraction of social values from the 
conditions that produced them, gave the world standards appro- 
priated in turn by the Roman Empire, and Christian religion. 

The Contribution from Rome 

Rome tried to objectify the Greek conceptions of society in 
institutions. The ideal of a society all serving common ends, 
the Romans tried to realize. The greatest achievement was the 
universal law, which as a framework of the institutional life of 
society became a pattern for the nations of Europe. 

The church became the administrator of these great contri- 
butions from antiquity. The Hebrews had been able to free the 
ethical impulses from the old social habits, and the Greeks had 
freed the idea of the end of life from the particular life activities. 
Rome's attempt to realize Greek ideals furnished the legal 
machinery by which society was held together until the freed 
ethical impulse could form into new habits having higher social 
ends. 12 It was not until the disintegration of the Roman Empire 
that its contribution of institutional machinery passed as an inheri- 
tance into the estate of the past already in possession of the 
church. 

Viewed in perspective the accumulated intrinsic worth of the 
inheritance assumes proportions unrealized by preceding cen- 
turies. The task of administering so valuable an inheritance, 
assumes also more and more its just proportions. The realization 
of the worth of the inheritance and of the magnitude of the task 
of conceiving and using means by which barbarian hordes could 
appreciate and appropriate its values and technique, brings the 
modern student into sympathetic relations with those who assumed 
the responsibility. It is the reflective consciousness of the race 
turning upon its past, and discovering in its only partially con- 
scious previous action the essence of its progressive development. 
The claim of inspiration is weighed in the light of the seemingly 
supernatural selection of means, that has secured the progressive 
appropriation of the inheritance and at the same time has allowed 
the timely manifestation of latent individual initiative. 

The misinterpretation of this work of the church is largely 
due to the fact that the modes of interpreting some aspect of the 



See Justin's exposition of this idea. Ch. III. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises 



119 



one all-ruling idea of God, are taken for the reality — the creed 
for the idea that transcends the limitations of any attempt to com- 
mensurately express it. The growth of the idea of God, which 
we may call the revelation of God, is continuous and commen- 
surate with human progress. 13 

To enter sympathetically into the life of the Christian Church 
is to view an attempt to make a sketch plan of life or human 
welfare for those who were to inherit with the lands of Western 
Europe, all the spiritual possessions, ethical, intellectual, and 
aesthetic of the dominant races of antiquity. To a degree hard at 
present to appreciate, every portion of experience was controlled 
by the idea of God. The cathedrals are symbols of the nature 
of the control of this idea. Dante's Divine Comedy testifies to 
its inspiration. The travail of the " spirit bred cities instead of 
speech." 

Simply to tell men what is virtue and to extol its beauty is 
insufficient. Something more than theory is necessary if the char- 
acters of nations are to be moulded, and inveterate vices eradi- 
cated. " The infirmity of human nature requires visible signs 
in which to rest." Herein the symbolisation and ritual of the 
Christian religion find their place. 

The different modes through which the Will of the Creator, 
the controlling Intelligence of the Universe, has manifested itself 
to man's comprehension or understanding, may be termed the 
Way of God in history. These different modes form a sort of 
hierarchy of standards, — tangible criterions for the measurement 
of all conduct. Misconception has often arisen from mistaking 
one of the " standards " or modes of experiencing for the life- 
giving source of these, the ultimate standard of all values. 
Authority, sanction, law, institutions, all forms of spiritual cul- 
ture are ways by which the controlling essence of all becomes a 
means of measuring life values. 

The last centuries have been possessed almost to exclusion of 
all else by the idea of man's control of nature's forces. Man in 
endeavoring to control meets evidence of a controlling principle 
in the universe. 



Forrest, Development of Western Civilization. P. 66. 



120 The Concept Standard 

The Standard as the Way of Nature 
Undoubtedly the reign of law in nature is uninterrupted, but 
in that law purpose is interwoven as the controlling element; 
just as the hand of every printer that sets up type for a new 
edition of the Iliad is governed by the mind of Homer. " To 
say that Purpose rules every detail in the making or development 
of the universe, does not by any means signify that it interferes 
at every step with the laws of Nature. Rather these laws are 
the expression of Purpose, its machinery to secure its designed 
result." This assumption does not preclude such theories as those 
of Huxley's cosmic nebula — so constituted that the actual world 
was destined to issue from it as an oak from an acorn. While 
it seems inconceivable that such a piece of mechanism should 
originate without an intelligence to design it, it is in line with 
reason to suppose that the intelligence might have exhibited itself 
once for all at the first beginning. Tyndall, 14 Huxley, a long 
line of scientists can be cited who testify to the inevitableness 
of the assumption of a determining force or purpose, in the uni- 
verse. Lord Kelvin 15 says, " I cannot say with regard to the 
origin or life, science neither affirms nor denies creative power. 
Science positively affirms creating and directive power, which 
she compels us to accept as an article of belief." 

While science has discovered relations in nature, to which 
has been given the name of laws, there has been no real explana- 
tion of their existence. They are expressions of what man calls 
Mind or Intelligence ; Man knows as efficient cause his own intel- 
ligence and will ; hence he views as cause of the ordered relations 
of nature Intelligence and Will. It is the highest and noblest 
conception within his reach. Being man he can speak only in 
human terms of what is superhuman. Limited as he is by the 
conditions of his nature he can find no mode of expression except 
such as is based upon sensible experience. Hence while he can 
convince himself by rational inference of the existence and to 
some extent the character of what is beyond sense, he can frame 
no description of it except so far as he is able to draw upon the 
phenomena of the external world. It seems perfectly consistent 
to attribute in the highest degree, viz., infinity, all possible excel- 



14 Belfast Address. 

15 Nineteenth Century, June 1903. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises i 2 i 

lence to the source of all. To repeat, this acceptance of a Supreme 
Intelligence can alone satisfy our intellectual need of causation; 
while on the other hand, " the nature of this Being as necessarily 
beyond the scope of our senses, can be known to us only indirectly 
through the effects of which He is the cause." 

" Of this Supreme Being, in a word, of God, to whom all infini- 
tude is seen to belong, man has thus conceived an idea, which 
though indirect is sound, and which necessarily follows from what 
he observes. In the same manner, he has formed another idea, 
equally solid, namely of the boundless power of this Being, sug- 
gested by the consideration of his works. The will of God is 
everywhere expressed, by the laws of nature, since these laws 
originate from Him." 

Thus the laws of nature are the means through which the 
Author of nature provides for all that is to be operated by the 
forces He has instituted. 

In the psychical world as in the physical, the real nature of 
the ego, must be learned through its effects. In this sense, all 
investigations of the psycho-physical order, all endeavor to record 
exactly the responses to stimuli, are of real worth. It is through 
the affections of the body that the nature of the person reveals 
itself. Modern writings show in some cases a tendency to con- 
found the ego with states of the ego. Such theories picture the 
ego as a result. One who watches an infant is forced by his 
observations to regard him from birth as a person, before there 
is any opportunity for a coordination of elements to take place 
and constitute a distinct personality. From all that can be defi- 
nitely known, through experiment and observation, the ego is a 
cause not a result. It seems strange after reading and weighing 
explanations of the self to see to what extremes theory goes, in 
order to avoid admitting the existence of a knowing, willing self. 

There is less challenge to reason in this presupposition than 
in any other. This knowing, feeling, willing self is a spiritual 
reality in that it has a permanent life distinguishable from the 
changes in the physical organism with which it is (in whatever 
way) connected. The acts of the individual are due to the nature 
or character of the self — a comparing, distinguishing self. For 
any conception of morality, this presupposition is a necessity. 
" The general principle of the unity and expansion of the self 
must be presupposed as in inductive inference general principles 



I2 2 The Concept Standard 

of organic interconnection in parts of living things are pre- 
supposed." 16 

The presence of a controlling principle in the universe, which 
man interprets as Supreme Intelligence we have just seen. This 
belief in the existence of an Eternal Consciousness, a mind whose 
thoughts are the standard of truth not only in morality but in all 
other existences as well, is a necessary postulate not only in ethics 
but in all knowledge. The idea of morality of which conscience 
is the source, is unintelligible in isolation from the knowledge of 
the existence of a knowing, feeling, willing self; other knowing, 
feeling, willing selves ; of a world by which these selves are 
enabled to realize their potentialities, and which they can partially 
control to that end. 

These Concepts Viewed in Relation to Pragmatism 
There is no inherent contradiction between the two statements 
that the element of reality which constitutes the standard must 
involve the elements of universality and permanence — and the 
statement of the pragmatist that the content of consciousness is 
real so long as the act resulting from it is adequate in adaptation 
to other contents. The pragmatist, in the analysis of the total 
activity of judgment, confines his investigations to the process. 
The question of reality per se does not enter into this considera- 
tion, but simply reality as entering into the reflective situation. 
This involves a change in something, of something no matter how 
much permanence is involved in something. Reality is concerned 
with the eternal relations and natures of things. A relation between 
certain contents of consciousness may bring adequate results 
in one case and be termed real because of the adequacy. The 
same apparent relation between these contents of consciousness 
may cause action that results disastrously and be termed there- 
fore unreal. Well and good — but this very adequacy in one situ- 
ation and inadequacy in another is a report of a new element 
which has entered into the conditions of the problem. The relation 
termed real may be essentially so, hence permanently so, and in 
further analysis of the inadequate situation this fact becomes one 
of the data. The inadequacy, if successfully apprehended, be- 
comes a means of discovering new relations which comprehend 
the real of the old situation. 



16 Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, P. 300. 



The Standard Functioning in National Crises 123 

It is man's faith in the permanence and universality of natures 
and relations that ensures his constant endeavor to fathom these 
truths. The continual search for the real is also a recognition 
of the potentiality of him who seeks. It is just this power of 
identifying himself with that which is wider and higher than his 
individual being that makes morality possible to man. Herein 
lies the truth of pragmatism : it is eternally true that all search 
for truth is a practical activity with an ethical purpose. 17 " The 
facts of the world are what they are : the real universe exposes 
our errors and makes them errors.'' There is in this striving of 
man an appeal to a conspectus of experience in which his is 
included. The real world is a world whose stuff is of the nature 
of experience, whose structure meets, validates, and gives warrant 
to our active deeds and whose whole nature is such that it can 
be interpreted in terms of ideas, propositions, and conscious mean- 
ings while in turn it gives to our fragmentary ideas and to our 
conscious life whatever connected meaning they possess. " My 
loyal search for truth insures the fact that I am in significant 
unity with the world's conscious life." 

The part of pragmatism out of harmony with our conception 
of the standard is that it " lives by selling its goods for present 
cash in the temple of its cause." Loyalty to the standard con- 
ceived in its aspect of harmonious relations, exacts a service in 
a cause possibly just now lost — "lost because the mere now 
is too poor a vehicle for the presentation of that ideal unity of 
life of which every form of loyalty is in quest. Humanity's most 
precious spiritual treasures are the result of loyalty that includes 
suffering." Man's tribute at all times in all ages to this sacrifice 
of self in service to a cause is itself one of the constant factors 
that indicate the truth of the ideal. 

" Loyalty as a devotion to a cause which unifies many human 
lives is profoundly religious in its spirit. For man viewed merely 
as natural phenomena are many and mutually conflicting crea- 
tures. Loyalty aims at their unity and such unity is always some- 
thing that has a supernatural meaning. To worship a divine 
power in a genuinely ethical spirit is always to serve a cause which 
is always in the human sense social — the cause of the state, or 
of the church or of humanity ; which loyalty to serve causes is to 
aim to give human life a supernatural, an essentially divine 
meaning." 

17 Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, P. 327 ff. 



CHAPTER V 

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS 

The Import of Self-activity 

In the preceding chapters the idea that the life of knowledge is 
in self-consciousness has been repeatedly given. To understand 
the world at all, it is necessary to conceive a self-active mind. 
Before proceeding to discuss explicitly the educational implications 
of the preceding chapters, the import of self-activity will be dis- 
cussed in such a way as to suggest the underlying principles of 
the educational process. 

The Aristotelian conception of a nature realizing its end, may 
be paraphrased into " Mind is the way in which the unity of an 
organism displays itself." Aristotle's conception that the char- 
acteristic function of an organism is the end of its existence 
emphasises the means of reaching that end. It supports too the 
fundamental thesis that all judgments are necessarily moral judg- 
ments. " The ultimate good of all judgment is the determination 
of a course of conduct looking toward an end." x Further " the 
whole of consciousness in as far as it is the consciousness of a 
single world that shares the reality of our waking self may be 
regarded as a continuous judgment which qualifies our present 
feelings and surroundings by the knowledge of what is more 
remote in time and space." 2 Accordingly " the treatment of a 
content by abstraction as a spatial or numerical whole may be 
reabsorbed in a more concrete treatment of it as an organic, 
aesthetic, or moral whole." 3 To further develop this idea of 
the essential nature of this self-activity, it is necessary to view 
it as constantly moving toward the establishing of relationships. 

The individuality in capacity is a microcosm constantly " mould- 
ing itself like a process of crystallization according to its own 
affinities and cohesions." 4 In theological language the soul is 



1 Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory. P. 241. 

2 and 3 Bosanquet, Theory of Logic. P. 91. 
4 Bosanquet, Psychology of the Moral Self. 

124 



Educational Implications 125 

the image of God, and as such is an activity 5 constantly sub- 
mitting" itself to the will of the Creator. Ignoring any difference 
that may be read into the two statements, the point in question 
is the identity in the significance of both for the purpose in hand. 
This process of self-realization is not one requiring little if any 
effort. On the contrary, man in his immaturity is deprived bio- 
logically of the means that would make survival too easy. The 
means of survival become almost necessarily means of progress. 
Both are dependent on the discovery of relationships either in the 
environment or between himself and the environment. Man's 
" characteristic function " or nature is the capacity to discover 
these. Man's limitation, the impossibility of thinking anything 
in isolation is thereby a means of his progress. In association, 
in judgment, the meeting point of differences furnishes the true 
guide to the intellectual process. 

The test of these discovered relationships is that of all reality, 
viz., the resistance of all efforts to destroy. The test the scientist 
applies in his laboratory is in essence one with that of the Medi- 
aeval philosopher in his metaphysical research. Thus the law 
of the conservation of energy when once discovered challenges 
all efforts to destroy its manifestations : the true nature of the 
idea, e.g., the circle, or more profoundly the self, resists all efforts 
to destroy it. It seems impossible to think without establishing 
a perceived relation or testing its validity by means of those 
already established. 

This perpetual establishing of relationship tends to give soli- 
darity to the group grasping the relationship. The group are 
" motived around the identical idea." The idea present in each 
is the identity in the different individuals that makes the group 
one in that particular. Each idea fully possessed by the indi- 
vidual is thus the motif or essence of solidarity. From this point 
of view each individual has the potentiality of a universal. To 
the degree that the individual really possesses ideas, does he pos- 
sess means of identifying himself with his fellows. Each idea 
thus possessed is an energy in interaction with a like energy pro- 
duced bv the same idea in others. The sum-total of these inter- 



5 A convincing modern treatment of this idea is found in an article 
entitled God, Man, and Immortality, written for the N. A. Review by 
Peter S. Grosscup, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals. N. 
A. Review, 1908. P. 811. 



126 The Concept Standard 

acting energies motived by the same idea form the institutions 
of society. An institution is a social habit, a purposeful activity. 
A cross-section view of civilization reveals a web of these 
interrelated activities. Such a view must necessarily be bewilder- 
ing. Here too lies the danger that the sociologist, in his eagerness 
to do, take the cross-section view, and thereby be forced to use 
an individualistic psychology, or a mechanical interpretation and 
ignore the sifted experience of the race in interpreting the present 
complexity. Civilization is a progressive elimination of waste — 
a freeing for higher activities. It is " the degree of physical 
freedom man has attained through his arts, inventions, and indus- 
tries." 6 When it is remembered that this attainment has been 
secured by substituting intellectual life for physical life, that this 
summarised achievement is the record of correspondence between 
the mind of man and the course of nature, it becomes necessary 
to consider in the light of its development, its significance. This 
significance is more nearly ascertained in its highest stage, but 
to see it all adequately its manifestation must be grasped as a 
stage of a process realising an end. Such effort to determine 
the significance of human endeavor should reveal a core of reality 
— an identity through changing conditions that persists and 
challenges all effort to destroy it. There seems to be constantly 
emerging, established relationships which are reabsorbed to serve 
as means of testing the value of new judgments. This sifted 
experience of the race constitutes the social inheritance. Its 
nature is essentially spiritual as civilization in its essence is the 
substitution of intelligence for physical effort. 

Nature of the Social Inheritance: Its Transmission 

Viewed from one of its aspects, this social inheritance consti- 
tutes both the control by which social stability is made possible, 
and the appreciation of values which form the ideals that give 
direction to social activity. Interpreted in terms of what this 
dissertation has termed more or less exactly the standard, this 
social inheritance is the summary of all its manifestations in both 
history and nature so-called. The idea of this determining prin- 
ciple progressively giving meaning or significance to man's effort 
as he showed himself capable and worthy has formed the content 



6 Tompkins, The Psychology of Teaching, P. 57. 



Educational Implications 127 

of this study. Its way in history reveals all that constitutes both 
man's control and appreciation of his experience. It functions 
as law, authority, institutions, all forms of spiritual culture, 
knowledge, literature, art. 

The transmission of this social inheritance is the work of edu- 
cation. As stated before the individual tends to be mastered by 
the complexity of the interrelated activities constituting society. 
Institutions or ways of transmitting the control and appreciation 
of these activities are part of the inheritance. The home, the 
school, the vocation, the state, the church, are among the great 
educational institutions by which this control and appreciation of 
life activity are furnished. None of these by the great law that 
everything should be viewed in its relation to the whole, can be 
satisfactorily considered in isolation. It is this seeing of things 
in proportion, that is urged upon modern thinkers. At the same 
time there is need of realizing the uniqueness of each of these 
institutions as a means of education or of social control. That 
this is variously conceived and poorly defined is seen in the 
tendency of each of these to encroach upon what has been 
regarded as the special field of activity of the other. This tendency 
indicates the need of some readjustment in the traditional activi- 
ties conceived as the special function of each of these. 7 

Some attempt has been made to show that the policy of making 
the system of education termed the school a means of conserving 
the social order is almost as old as society itself. " The school 
as a form of institutional life is the special instrument devised 
by society for maintaining the existing standard of civilisation 
by conferring upon the individual its spiritual possessions and 
thereby enabling him to become a bearer of the social purpose." 8 
It is a miniature community in which the individual is enabled to 
face society step by step and consequently tends to master it. It 
reduces complexity and diversity, selects more typical enduring 
values, omitting irrelevancies, and presents typical phases of high- 
est community life. It becomes necessary for the school to gen- 
eralize, or present a comprehensive social environment. By 
reflecting the upper levels of society the school should become 

7 It is in this statement that the biological analogy of an institution 
as an organ is seen to be incorrect. Interchange and transfer of function 
is not possible for organs. 

8 MacVannel, Dr. John A., The College Course in the ' Principles of 
Education, P. 36. 



128 The Concept Standard 

a mode of accelerating social progress. By " reflecting the ideal 
toward which the wider social life is struggling," 9 it becomes 
an instrument of social betterment. 

To reflect the ideal it is necessary that those who are to trans- 
late the social inheritance into the experience of the child, should 
themselves embody in the highest degree possible that inheri- 
tance. It must be experience that is translated. The mere 
transference by means of language from mind to mind is not 
translation of experience. " The life of knowledge is in self- 
consciousness which systematically understands and you cannot 
have it cheaper. We know not as much as in our memory, but 
as much as we understand. . . . Knowledge differs from 
opinion in the degree in which as a living mind it has understood 
and organized its experience." 10 

Environment should be such that the self-activity of a child 
encounters crises that call for that interpretation of his experi- 
ence, that will furnish at once control of the present, and also 
values for future emergencies. The alertness of the teacher 
should assist in bringing about such crises and at the critical 
moment introduce that part of race experience that can be assimi- 
lated best at that time. The rediscovery on the part of the child 
of these relations should revive that exhilaration that first accom- 
panied the discovery in the past. This attitude should be a stimu- 
lus to further endeavor in the same line. If in reality there is a 
sharing of experience, there is an ever-growing feeling of free- 
dom as something won in the process. It is in miniature that 
freeing for higher activities that the race has secured as com- 
pensation for all effort. Each experience so shared becomes, 
as we have shown, a means of solidarity in the school community. 
Thus an ideal society realizing the means of its solidarity is pos- 
sible in the school as a social unit. A selected environment renders 
possible a study of the technique of social control. The fact 
that the environment is isolated must be constantly borne in mind. 
This consciousness of the relation of the school to other institu- 
tions, to society, will impel those in charge to make the con- 
nections wherever possible. This borderland region of activity 
should be a constant medium of exchange of influences. 



9 Ibid. 

10 Bosanquet, Essays and Addresses. P. 196-197. 



Educational Implications 129 

Interchange of Influences between Institutions for Educational 
Purposes 

Several aspects of this feature must suggest themselves. It 
is here that the spirit and work of Pestalozzi should have its 
influence. To connect with life, seemed his main endeavor. If 
in endeavoring to do this, he and more especially his followers 
lost themselves in the way of doing this, it but illustrates our 
thesis that to prevent dissipating of energy there must be con- 
stantly some means of relating activities to some central motif 
or principle. The school as the supplement to the home was 
Pestalozzi's conception. While this may not be entirely correct, 
there is great need at present to define the specific function of 
each, and at the same time to point out the meeting point of their 
difference. There must be a constant stream of influence between 
the two : the direction will depend upon the relative levels. 

The connection too with life zvork was another of Pestalozzi's 
ideas that he strove to work out. The relation of the school to 
the vocations is a burning question to-day. The greatest danger 
lies in viewing this relation in isolation from interrelated ends. 
It is necessary to see this movement in relation to the national 
ideal. 

The connection of the school with the state is forcibly brought 
to mind by the industrial trend in educational lines. The almost 
general consensus of opinion that there should be a Minister of 
Education, that the present bureau should be made a department 
with an accompanying enlarged scope of activities, requires but 
the slightest direction to make it an actuality. There is much 
discussion in certain circles of a combined Ministry of Education, 
Labor and Health. Others are considering an independent Depart- 
ment of Labor, with a combined Department of Education and 
Health. The relation of the proposed Children's Bureau to these 
is another factor. Here again the historical phase is valuable for 
study. The advantages and defects of the Guilds of the later 
middle ages and their schools in their interrelations and in their 
relation to the municipality are aspects worthy of study, A com- 
parative study of the administrative systems of Germany and 
France with a full appreciation of the conditions in each country 
would still reveal meeting points of difference that would afford 
valuable data for the control of school affairs. State intervention 



130 The Concept Standard 

in the control of the school as an instrument of social progress has 
never been more spectacular than at present. Emperor William 
has demonstrated that the relation is a vital one in politico- 
economic welfare, even when the stress is on the economic. In 
our own country it is forced on us that there should be an inter- 
change of influences throughout the whole country by means of 
the centre. Such interrelating is the very life of the organization. 

It remains to consider for a moment the connection- of the 
school with the church. If compelled to state the most vital issue 
in current world educational thought, one would be forced to 
consider the relation of school to church as probably the one 
involving most thought. England is in the throes of a struggle 
to settle it. Germany has secured apparently at least a temporary 
adjustment. France has laid violent hands on the relation and 
severed all bonds at least legally. Our own country is wondering 
what adjustment to make to secure the ethical impulse it is miss- 
ing in its life. Then, too, men's spiritual or intellectual energies 
have been subsumed in the Western development of physical free- 
dom and just now there is a release of these in some places, and 
in others a rebound from prolonged tension. Men are craving 
again that expression of these released spiritual energies. 

In somewhat contradictory ways and from unexpected channels 
does this movement manifest itself. Anglo-Saxon particularism 
has spent its force or at least has reached its zenith. However, 
the race has not lost its power of comprehensive thinking. There 
is a manifest revival of philosophy in English-speaking countries. 
There seems to be gathering a mighty force of the smothered 
convictions of millions of souls, that will free man's essential 
nature from the tyranny of facts based on sense impression only. 
There is a tendency to seize the established relationships of natural 
forces stored in laboratories — these vast accumulations of fact — 
and to transform them by means of working hypotheses or com- 
prehensive theories into universal modes of control of life-activity. 
Life is being interpreted as something more than absorption in 
securing physical freedom. This diverting of man's intelligence 
into economic channels only, has in reality been elevating a means 
to the dignity of an end. The cry has been control of nature's 
forces : it is now control of social forces. New values at once 
present themselves. There is need in control of forces to know 
the direction. Control of social forces for what? The answer 



Educational Implications 131 

comes in various interpretations of the aim of life. This at once 
brings philosophic discussion. The standard to measure life's 
values is strongly in men's minds. The end, general welfare, 
common good, is interpreted so far to mean conditions of social 
health. The possibility of redistribution of direction of energy 
is being realized, and with it the full import of direction. Equal 
freedom is an ideal urged as giving direction to energy. Freedom 
for what? With the tentative answer self-realization, the whole 
personality is at once suggested. The law of equality ceases to 
have its economic import alone, and in place of setting over one 
particular activity against another particular activity, the whole 
personality of one is set over against the whole personality of 
the other. 

The ethical import of self-realization is in the air we breathe 
to-day. Cults of various kinds are growing up in our midst where 
possibility of self-growth is so all-engrossing an idea as to com- 
pletely remove the devotee from all participation in the life about 
him. Estrangement from family and friends is a result sug- 
gesting the influence of Eastern mysticism. Absorption in a new 
Nirvana, or even a return to the Eastern conception itself, is the 
result of the force of the rebound from pent-up energies together 
with the freeing of those heretofore engrossed in securing means 
of gratification of physical wants. 

It may be in keeping to justify this digression from the con- 
sideration of the question, the connection of the school and the 
church. The church is the institution affording opportunity for 
man's expression of his relation to God. The conviction is forced 
that the best expression for man's essential nature will be found 
in established institutions which have their roots in civilization. 
.Where worship is not purely formal there is that satisfaction of 
the human spirit that finds a parallel only in the aesthetic. Its 
presence in the individual is easily recognised and is termed the 
spirituelle. There is an apprehension by feeling or sensation of 
that attribute which when manifested in intellectual knowledge 
is termed truth. The same idea is expressed when one says 
" there is a flash of the infinite that possesses one," or when 
another says " Art is eternal." xl It is probably this thrill that has 
made every primitive race find some expression in a religious 



'- " See development of this idea in Judge Grosscup's article in N. A, 
Review, 1908. P. 811. 



132 The Concept Standard 

way. All common things are transfigured by " this light that 
never was on sea or land." A joyousness, a buoyancy, seems 
almost to destroy what we term the material existence. 

" Now have these homely things been made 
Sacred, and a glory on them laid. 

Now is the holy not afar 

In temples lighted by a star 

But where the loves and labors are: 

Now that the King has gone this way 

Great are the things of every day." 12 

The church is the institution in which men have found expres- 
sion for the spiritual part of their nature. This expression is 
what men are seeking to-day as is evidenced by the number of 
cults that have arisen within the past few years. That this expres- 
sion is necessary for man's fullest self-realization all history 
witnesses. 

Even more fundamental is another contribution of the church. 
Where religion is an experience and not a mere form, there is 
a continual freeing of the ethical impulse. When the question 
of moral education impinges so manifestly on present educational 
thought, this ethical impulse is sought in vain apart from religion. 
Bosanquet says here, " If we think that the will to be good grows 
up as a matter of course in every man and maintains itself without 
help from a greater power than his, then we are in a fool's para- 
dise and have still much to learn from the Catholic Church." 13 

Just how this connection can be made by which education in 
ethical lines is vivified by the religious principle, no one seems 
to be prepared to say. Congresses are being held for discussion 
of this. This problem shares with the industrial problem the 
interest of our leaders in educational thought. Until some means 
is provided it is fitting to suggest that there be avenues of influence 
sympathetically and tolerantly maintained. In connection with 
a number of our State Universities and other institutions of 
higher learning, there are societies being formed, affiliated with 
various denominations. The Newman Club and The St. George's 
Club representing respectively the Roman Catholic and Episcopal 



12 Edwin Markham. 

13 Bosanquet, Civilization of Christendom. 



Educational Implications 133 

churches may be cited. Students professing these different beliefs 
organize and provide means of coming into their inheritance in 
this as well as in the lines of secular knowledge. The interchange 
of influences would seem to be of benefit to all concerned. It 
was only through such broadly tolerant geniuses as Frederick 
the Great that Germany succeeded in making any adjustment. 
The present Emperor in like spirit recognises the function of 
religion in asking the schools to prepare God-fearing, patriotic, 
and intelligent men and women. 

Another medium through which something of that which uplifts 
can be given to the immature in our schools is the personality of 
a teacher whose experience in that, as well as all lines, is radiated 
without one word of what is ordinarily termed religion. Still 
another is provided in the increased efficiency of our Sunday 
Schools. The school when viewed in its external relations and 
internal relations is at once a means of self-realization, and a 
means of " assimilating the members to the social purpose." When 
education is localized instead of centralized — as in the case in 
America — there is missing too often the ideals. There is a 
failure of those in the work, teacher and pupil and administrator 
alike, to see the relation of his particular work to that of the 
whole. Much of the time given to " method," in the preparation 
of teachers should be given to enabling the prospective teacher 
to see the relation of the school to society, both as it is and as 
it should be, and then to ascertain means of bridging the gap. 
The interrelations of the school and other institutions should be 
studied and the possibility of securing reciprocal reinforcement 
of all these institutions should be worked out as far as possible. 
If the significance of the work of the school is grasped, and the 
significance of his share in the whole is realized, the work of the 
teacher becomes that of the artist, and ceases to be that of a 
drudge. 

Summary 

Self-activity has been made the basis of this discussion. Aris- 
totle's conception of the characteristic function of man has been 
interpreted to show that this activity is the means of survival 
and at the same time of progress. This progressive adaptation 
of the individual through intelligence and will, is the essence of 
the self. In the process of this self-realization, man's limitation 



134 The Concept Standard 

of not being able to think any thing in isolation is again the means 
of his progress. The discovery of the meeting point of differ- 
ences, or of relationships, is at once the means and end of the 
endeavor — the seeing all in One. / This perpetual establishing of 
relationships mediates towards unity by giving solidarity to the 
group motived around the identical idea. The social good is 
thereby furthered by means of the individual good. Effort to 
determine the significance of activities and attainment current 
in civilization reveals these as the sifted experience of the race. 
This social inheritance is the core of reality in human experience, 
the way of God in history. The translation of this social inheri- 
tance into the experience of the child makes him the bearer of 
the social purpose. This work of translation is the work of 
different institutions : the home, the school, the vocation, the 
state, the church. 

The work of the school can be rendered better by defining the 
unique fitness of each of these institutions and by providing ave- 
nues by which the influences of each can reciprocally reinforce 
one another. The work of the school should be a sharing of 
experience. The various so-called subjects of study become under 
this interpretation different modes of experiencing life, " method " 
fundamentally the " mode of the individual's behavior in the 
realization of some phase of his environment." This mode of 
behavior should give rise to attitudes that become stimuli to 
continued endeavor. The school can be made a selected environ- 
ment in which the technique of school control tends to be mas- 
tered. In connection with this aspect, there should be a borderland 
of activities by which there is a constant interchange of influences 
with the life without. 

The direction of these influences when the school is in con- 
nection with the home is determined by the relative levels of each. 
The connection of the school with the vocations brings out the 
industrial school problem so urgent to-day. The connection of 
the school with the state forces the consideration of a Department 
of Education. The connection of the school with the church 
brings us in touch with the problem of moral education. Some 
channel must be provided that allows the ethical impulse freed 
or called forth by religion to enter with the life of the school 
and to give direction to the conduct of its members. 



Educational Implications 



i3S 



By thus viewing the school in its external relations to society 
and at the same time in its internal relations as a miniature com- 
munity, its possibilities as a means of social control and of self- 
realization is revealed to those in charge. Thereby the significance 
of the whole and of each one's share in the whole is grasped. 
Realization of the significance of one's work makes the work 
art instead of drudgery. 



136 



The Concept Standard 



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